Mystic Mindset
by Whirl Feather
Summary: Pleecy's a special Irken valued by the Tallest because of her 'talents.' When she's sent after Zim after telling them he's heading to a galaxy full of planets and befriends Dib, a horrible accident occurs. Can she beat the time limit, or is Dib doomed?
1. The Assigning Pulse

Pleecy could hear the applause from the Tallest's introduction, beginning the Great Assigning, from her place in the hallway outside the convention room on Conventia. She was facing the elevator leading to the main convention room, leaning against the opposite wall, bouncing a super bounce Vortian ball about the size of a tennis ball, *toss, clunk, boing! rattle, clunk, catch, repeat.* The hall she was in resembled a hotel hallway, with some plants, couches, doors, windows, etc.

Pleecy was uninterested in the Great Assigning, seeing as she had conquered many a planet and had eventually grown bored. But _this_ was because of her genes. You see, she was a special Irken, especially to the Tallest. Very special, indeed...

Her genetic code was a mix of Irken Mystic and Blue Irken. An Irken Mystic is an Irken who's born with control over a specific element, in her case, energy. So, technically speaking, Pleecy was a psychic. An Irken Mystic was marked by a symbol on the forehead, representing their element. Sometimes Mysticcs of other species were also found, but _very_ rarely. A Blue Irken, on the other hand, was merely an Irken equivalent of an albino, but with different eyes and sky blue skin. The Tallest always loved them and kept them busy because they were known to be mischievous at best, bloodthirsty at worst. But, after a while, many became pacifists and headed to secret Irken Pacifist convents or monasteries, renouncing the current Irken leaders for good.

Pleecy was both, so her appearance was somewhat startling: light blue skin, three purple eyelashes per eye. Her antennas looked like Dib's hair, scythe-like, but silver tipped with not-as-thick bases. They were about as long as half her height and jutted forward into her field of vision. She was taller than Zim by her forehead and antennas. Her gloves, boots, and tights were the normal black color, and her PAK was the usual colors. Her dress was red, striped by lines, like Zim's outfit. It had long, flowy sleeves with a wide opening that came to her gloves, also striped by lines, and there were the usual triangles at her shoulders. Her collar was also different: It was a large, triangle - shaped, puffy thing with 3 layers. The topmost layer, the main layer, was purple with dark green tipping at the points. It formed a V shape around her neck. The other 2 layers were only 2 points that came off the bottom point of the main one. The 2nd layer was red tipped in dark green, and layer 3 was dark green tipped in gold. But perhaps her most curious features were on her face; her forehead was adorned with a swirl the color of light blue, light green, and purple combined, composed of a larger swirl, though still small on her head, which rested on her brow. It sprouted up and curled to Pleecy's right. A smaller swirl sprouted from the left and center of the first, spinning to her left. And her eyes, oh, the eyes! They looked like normal Irken eyes, yes, but had a line coming from the outer, upper side in each eye to the lower, inner corner. **(A/N In case you didn't understand that description of the eyes, they had diagonal lines that slanted toward where her nose would be if she had a nose.) **This divided the eye in half; the top half was dark blue in color, the bottom half normal blue. Plus, each bubble in her eyes had a violet-ish tint along the edges, indicating personality changes the Tallests' feared would happen. What a strange sight she was, at first...

She sighed monotonously as she heard the *clink, clink* steps of her S.I.R. Unit, Neeka, come down the hall. Neeka turned a bend to her master's left, carrying a box of Vort Dogs under her arm, an Irken soda in one hand, an oil can with a straw in the other.

Neeka was a normal S.I.R. She had purple eyes most of the time instead of red or blue. She also had a swirl on her forehead, but just a single, right twirling swirl that marked her as Pleecy's.

Pleecy turned her head with an affectionate smile as Neeka made her way down the hallway.

"Ah, Neeka," Pleecy said, "You're back."

"Yes, and i was hoping you'd mix me a drink, if you don't mind, Master," said Neeka in her best 'pretty please' tone.

Pleecy caught her ball just before it would've hit her face, then a robotic talon extended from her PAK, took the ball, and exchanged it with a plastic bag of minerals and sediment. Pleecy ripped the bag open and laid it on a metal table that sped around the corner from her left to in front of her. Suddenly, the outline of the oil can lit up in rainbow colors like ribbon, then returned to normal and floated away to Pleecy's hand. Neeka had an old rust problem, and the drink helped keep her gears polished.

Just as the Irken was about to grasp the levitating can, she froze up and got a far-away look on her face. Her eyes and mark glowed faintly. Neeka didn't panic, because she knew what was happening to her master.

The way Irken Mystics see it, lines of energy connect every soul. When big events happen or are imminent, large pulses of energy radiate out. One such pulse had just gone out as the Great Assigning ended and an annoying, red eyed Irken interrupted it. Pleecy felt the energy pulse rush off in two different directions: out into space, and into the convention room. The pulse originated from a huge feeling of Ignorance on Foodcourtia.

"Master, is it a Foresight?" (Term the duo used to refer to this sort of event)

Pleecy could only close her eyes, nod slightly, and take a deep breath. What she _didn't_ tell Neeka was that the energy pulse that went into space rebounded and hit her square-on...

iL

Pleecy sent Neeka to go see what had happened in the convention hall. Meanwhile, Pleecy would meditate to see where the pulse had rebounded from...

Space flashed by the vision of her mind's eye. A solar system, then a blue and green ball shot into Pleecy's mental view. The view was then replaced again with a view over a grimy little city, then with a view of a freaked-out child on a rooftop. He had a bodily shape not unlike an Irken, but he was pale skinned and had no PAK or antennas, but instead had hair shaped like Pleecy's antennas pointed backwards. A black vest overlapped a blue smilely face shirt with a neutral expression. A satellite sat next to him.

_*Of course,*_ She thought. _*This is Earth! The pacifist planet Ley inhabits. He must be a...how's it pronounced? Hyuu-men?...Wait how could a smeet like him be-*_ She was disturbed from her thoughts as a male voice, one of the Conventia announcers, rang out over the intercom.

"Invader Pleecy, please report to the Massive's control room! Invader Pleecy, please report to the Massive's control room!"

She let out a growling sigh as she rose, shook her head rapidly to wake herself up, and began walking around the bend in the hallway to her left.

_*I swear, if this is a spy or assassin job-*_ Neeka cut her thoughts short as she came out of an auto-door and joined her master.

Pleecy watched her feet and said, with a solemn look in her eyes, "Well then, Neeka, what'd I miss?"

"Well, Master, a strange male interrupted the ending of the Great Assigning."

"Identify."

Neeka's body stiffened, and her eyes turned red as she entered "Information Mode."

"Former Invader Zim," Neeka said, rather monotonously, "re-encoded as food service drone for almost destroying Irk. Given fake mission in hopes of...uhm, crossing over."

Pleecy smirked and began a fit of laughter. "Bwuha-hahahahaha!" She cackled as Neeka changed to purple and relaxed. "Now I know who to blame for wrecking the Galactic Observatory!"

"The Tallests seemed to have a problem with him..." Neeka observed as they stepped into a teleporter that had been specifically programmed as a shortcut to the Massive's bridge level. "Oh, here we are."

They materialized in front of the auto-door leading into the comtrol room, where the Tallests resided. Pleecy put her back to the door as three cords came down and plugged into her PAK momentarily. They unplugged, she turned around, and the doorway opened.

Pleecy reluctantly saluted as she looked up, seeing the Tallests on a platform doubled over in laughter. "You rang?" she said, with arms folded and a bored look.

"Ah-haha! Ahahahahaha!" Purple laughed. "Phew, ah yes, Invader Pleecy."

"Get on with it before I snap, please. I was busy when you called." Pleecy scowled.

Clearing his throat, Red said, "We have a question for you. You see, we sent Zim" -he said the name with an acid tone-"off in some random direction so he'd quit bothering us." He pointed to the large window, and a galactic map with a blinking red dot heading right showed up on it, like a large screen. "We wanted to see what one of our past advisors," he said slyly, "would think. So what do you say? How long will he -"

"You sent him to the next galaxy over," Pleecy cut him off, reading his mind. "There's plenty of planets there; the pacifists are scattered throughout it," she said, quite coldly and quickly. Of _course,_ this Blue Irken knew where pacifists were. It confirmed the Tallests' fears of their generation's Blue Irken being interested in the pacifists, the stupid defects! As if reading their minds,_ again_, Pleecy said, "The fear is plain on your faces; I don't need to read your minds to know you _now_ want me to track him or something, right?"

The Tallests looked at each other, then huddled with their backs to Pleecy, whispering. She caught a few words, even though she tried not to listen; they weren't very good at whispering.

"What, no..." Purple looked at Red with concern before Red shoved his head down and sternly said something along the lines of what's done is done and they shouldn't waste such talent and a chance to explore a new galaxy _ripe_ for conquest. Purple and Red exchanged "Yes's" and "No's" until Red confused Purple by saying "No" instead of "Yes".

"So we agree?" said Red.

"Yes...wait!-N -!" Purple was cut off by Red as he turned around toward the irritated Blue Irken and began debriefing her on her newest task...


	2. Camoflauge

**Author's Note- Thanks for Reading! I had an A/N typed on the last chapter and a few changes, but being as blind as a bat as I am I didn't see the save button XD. Anyway, this series was originally made on Youtube, but that didn't work out well, so I'll just use Youtube for character designs instead ^FT^. **

Pleecy let out a groan of annoyance as the ship sped through space. She was about a day's journey behind whats-his-frickin'-name and had been complaining all the way from the Massive.

"Agh! This is worse than the time I had to be a frickin' representative at Blorch! _Gah! Tracking a defect!"_ She sighed. Neeka was in "sleep mode" next to her because she'd grown tired of her master's complaining. Pleecy was drumming her fingers on Neeka's head as her mind wandered...

Pleecy wondered if the pulse from earlier had to do with this idiot she had to follow. If he found an inhabited planet, she was to wait for him to screw up _or_ get killed _or_ die, whichever came first, then await further instructions...

...If he never _found_ a planet, she was to choose an invasion-worthy planet in this new galaxy and await further instructions...

...how "exciting."

_Ugh._

Pleecy decided to follow her S.I.R's lead and activate "cold sleep": suspended animation. Yawning, she adjusted her seat to lie backwards and made herself comfortable as the computer sprayed her with a mist of liquid Nitrogen...

iLiL

...Six Earth months came and went, and as Dib chased Zim with sleep cuffs, Pleecy's computer recorded their antics from the Earth's atmosphere...

"Planet reached! Subject 'Zim' has settled on Planet..._Errrrth_." The computer began heating Pleecy and her PAK shocked her "awake."

Pleecy drew her first breath in months in sharply as she was re-animated, gasping. She shook her head to wake herself and looked out the window, shocked to see the planet she felt the pulse rebound from six months ago on Conventia.

The Blue Irken touched the top of Neeka's head, and a menagerie of Irken symbols lit up. Neeka's curled-up form came out of its ball and, now sitting, saluted her master. "Good Morning, Neeka. Begin planetary analysis."

Neeka yawned. "Good Morning Master." She rubbed her eyes and turned to the blue ball out the window. Her sight became like that of a pair of high-tech army binoculars.

Pleecy turned to the windshield, hands behind her back. "Computer, what are Earth's main threats? Even with the Pacifist Treaty?" Two symbols appeared: the armed forces crest, and the Swollen Eyeball symbol. But the second soon disappeared. "Main threat, above all?" The computer zoomed in on Dib just as his sleep cuffs disintegrated. Pleecy shuddered as she recognized the boy. Her eyes widened, and she sighed.

_*Not _again_. God, I hate destiny...*_

For about a year, Pleecy observed Earth; what _they_ thought was _normal_, what gave it away that _Zim was_ an alien, what mistakes he made (all too common), how this "Dib-boy" behaved, how they both were treated, how they fought, how Tak _nearly_ conquered Earth ("A shame she didn't!" Pleecy would say), how Zim ruined an Earth holiday, etc...

Sometime in Earth's "springtime," Pleecy felt it was the perfect time to land and begin blending in. She made herself and Neeka holo-disguises, updated versions of Tak's disguise. The devices were collars that had waterproof "skin" and activated the disguise when touched. Neeka's doubled as a_ "thought speaker";_ what one thought, the collar spoke.

Neeka's disguise was a lean, black cat with piercing green eyes, red inner ears and white tippings. The tippings were on her ears, paws, underbelly, and the end of her tail, which curled in on itself. Her paws were pointed like Mimi's, and her swirl still showed on her forehead.

Pleecy's disguise was of a young Earth female, with blue eyes that had diamond-shaped irises and thin orange eyeliner. Her long, brown hair was riddled with short blond stripes. There were 2 parts of her hair that jutted out and dangled in her face. They were shaped similar to Gaz's hair. The right one was larger, about the length of her face, and jutted greatly into he right eye. The left one was small and only reached to about the middle of her left eye. Both were at a 90 degree angle. Her swirl clearly showed as well. Her gloves, tights, and boots were all still black. Her sleeves resembled normal Irken sleeves, green triangles at her shoulders and tighter red sleeves striped by plain lines. Her dress was red with lage purple stripes and a pocket on either side. There was also an Irken symbol in the middle of the dress. (Pleecy wanted to see just _how_ observant humans could be, and she thought it would add a little fun to her time here.) Her dress collar was the same shape, but it only had 1 layer. It was red with green points. And, of course, her PAK still showed as well, though her hair pretty much obscured it. The duo looked at each other, bewildered, and laughed as the voot runner descended into cloud cover.

iLiL

Elsewhere, a young boy gazed through a large telescope at a weird light hidden by clouds. Shooting star? The moon? *_No, no! It can't be! It looks like Zim's or Tak's ship! But how? Tak's ship is in the garage, and why would Zim be flying around at night? What is that, then?*_ He could barely see an outline, but it was DEFINITELY an Irken ship_...*Did Zim call for help? He's too stuck-up to do that, isn't he?*_ Many questions flew through the boy's vast head as he snapped a few obscure photos through his telescope of the strange light that dissapeared down the street from his house...

iLiL

Meanwhile, Pleecy had begun constructing her base. It materialized silently,. It was a design she drew and programmed while in Earth's atmosphere; red outer walls, purple roof with a half circle attic window. A sidewalk led to a white, plain door. The yard had not a fence, but pegs with an electric fence perimeter strung between them. In the fence was a quite suiting yard; green grass, woodland animal decorations, and a garden on the left side (right side if you were facing the house) of the house that was overshadowed by a tree as tall as the house. There were four deer, two skunks, a rabbit, and two squirrels that were similar Zim's gnome-robots. Pleased that her design was quite fitting for the neighborhood, Pleecy and Neeka walked in as the voot runner landed in the attic. The animals all disappeared below ground and reappeared in a new place. This was Pleecy's _Automatic Defence Scrambling System_, programmed into her house to prevent the discovery of blind spots in the "animal field." Her house was on a corner between Dib and Zim's houses. She figured she'd be able to watch them both more closely here...

**Author's Note-Again, thanks for reading!** **Btw Disclaimer-I do NOT own I.Z. or any chracters/places assotiated with it. I just own the stuff I make up and my OC's. **


	3. New Student, New Friends

The bell rang as Zim and Dib stopped fighting and took their seats. Ms. Bitters slithered in the classroom, and the class prepared for today's _doom_-filled lecture. Just before Ms. Bitters was about to begin, the phone rang.

"Another one?...she's _what_?... Fine. Send her over. Gah!" She slammed down the phone. The phone burst into flames as a little soul floated away. "Class, we have _another_ new student joining us. If I hear a _peep_ out of anyone about her '_condition_,' you'll be sent to the underground classrooms. Am I clear?"

A knock at the door made everyone jump, except for Ms. Bitters, of course. The door swung open and a silhuette of a young girl with blazing blue eyes appeared in the doorway. Though she_ seemed_ sinister, the moment she came out of the shadows she seemed friendly. She walked over to the teacher's desk and handed Ms. Bitters a slip of paper 'from her doctors'.

"This is Pleecy. Her father is a scientist, and when something went _horribly_ wrong, she became slightly...radioactive. _Therefore_" -Ms. Bitters stole a glance at Dib- "her doctors say she may be prone to strange occurances and she needs to be isolated in class...yes, child?" Pleecy nudged her and pointed at Zim.

_ *This is it! Maybe _she_ sees something wrong with Zim!*_ Dib thought eagerly.

As if reading his mind, the new girl stated,"Ms. Bitters, I thought you might want to know that _he's_ radioactive, too."

"How would _you_ know?"Ms. Bitters said, an evil twinge in her voice.

"Daddy told me about a condition once, _Amazonian Radioactive Dermitius_, that caused skin discoloration. If my doctors say I have to be isolated, he would have to be, too. He's probably more radioactive than_ I_ am." Zim thought he saw her wink. Upon hearing this, all the kids in class besides Dib scrambled to get as far from Zim as possible. There was an empty right angle of seats around Zim.

"Very well. You'll sit by Zim, then." Ms. Bitters said. Pleecy looked up at her with a shocked expression. "You're _joking_, right?" Ms. Bitters growled. The new girl rolled her eyes and sat right next to the weird green kid, while a boy with scythe-shaped hair watched them sceptically.

iLiLiL

The bell rang for lunch to begin, and Pleecy was one of the last to leave the classroom. She had a feeling the Dib-_hyuuman_ wanted to speak with her...

Pleecy was walking down the hall when the Dib-boy caught up with her. "You're wrong, y'know."

She looked at him and tilted her head; she had a curious** (curious as in weird, creepy)** look in her eyes. She smiled slightly, looking at him from the corner of her eye. "About...?"

The look in her eyes spooked Dib at first, but he ignored this; it was probably nothing anyway. "He's not radioactive, he's an _alien_!"

Pleecy's eyes widened slightly, and she almost looked panicked_._ Her eyes narrowed. "An _alien_, huh?"

Dib, seeing that the new girl seemed to believe him, grinned and nodded.

_*He knows more than I thought, but he seems to think he can trust me,*_ Pleecy thought. Then a devious plan came to her mind...

_*I could use this to my advantage _easily_. Ok. In that case, I'll play along...*_

Pleecy sat alone at lunch. That is, until Gaz and Dib sat at the same table. Gaz and Pleecy became friends fast and got along well, sharing game tips and versing each other, and Dib sang like a canary when Pleecy mentioned her parasychology studies!

Dib still felt uneasy about her gaze, though...

Frightening, yet kind. Knowing, yet intrigued. Evil yet...sorrowful? Hmm...

Pleecy had packed her lunch; due to her "condition," she was supposed to. Thank Irk, too, because the Skool food was so horrendous it was pretty much smeet abuse, even by Irken standards! : some gruel-like blob of an unidentifiable substanace was served that day. She shuddered when she saw Zim poking at it.

Hey, you okay?" Dib looked concerned: Pleecy had stifled a gag reflex.

"Yes, its just -" she took a deep breath. "the Skool food looks more like sludge, how the Ir-"she stopped herself from saying 'Irk'. She covered herself by making a sicky noise. "uhg... how the heck can you guys _eat_ it?"

"Don't ask me. Half the time I don't even _eat_ it!"

"Doesn't look like _Zim_ does, either. Speaking of Zim, you said he was an _alien_, right?" He nodded. "And you have proof?" Maybe she shouldn't of asked, because for the rest of the day through notes during class Dib told her about the freaky occurances and his 'proof.'

_*Geez, poor smeet must not have a life or something. Surely he couldn't have learned _this much_ through observation alone...Irk, is he ever gonna shut up?* _Pleecy thought as she recieved another note. She'd respond the best she could to each, mainly writing things like 'facinating' or 'how inhuman!' She tried keeping her responses as brief as possible, since, having only about a year to practice her _English_ handwriting, her writing was barely decent.

After Skool, Pleecy told him that he'll have to come by her house with his 'proof' some time, and that this was most intriguing...

iLiLiL

Walking home, Zim noticed the new girl was walking behind him. He turned his head around, not wanting to be followed... _*What the, where'd that little new-hyuuman go?*_ He turned his head forward again; Pleecy was in front of him now. _*How'd she-! Wait, i-is that a_ _PAK? is it? IS IT?*_ He scowled at her, confused, as he stopped at his front door and watched the girl walk down the road a few streets over...

iLiLiL

Pleecy burst into a laughing fit fit as she locked her door, rambling on about "that unobservant defect!" and "the gullible Dib-boy!"...

**Author's Note- Thanks for reading! I couldn't think of anything else to type to set off scenes, so I just decided to use my Username's initials ^FT^. Btw in case Pleecy seems like a Mary Sue or whatever it is perfect characters are called, she's not meant to be one. When I first designed her I really liked the color sky blue, Individuality, and the thought of psychic abilities similar to Qwen's from the show "Ben 10" ( I still like those, too.). R&R please ^FT^ P.S. I just made up that skin disease thing, it's not real XD.**


	4. The Accident

Neeka was above in the house, sitting on the couch as she listened to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" thud from downstairs. Dib had called, leaving a message saying he'll be down that night. Now, on Saturday afternoon, Pleecy was arming her computer's _"Dance Password"_ system: nobody could mimic her dancing when she was in a mood. Plus, every being moves completely different, even if their mind-controlled or possessed, and Pleecy knew that all too well…

The house looked twice as normal as Zims': a door from the flower-wallpapered living room in the far wall led to the yellow-and-white kitchen. Also, a hallway in the left upper corner of the living room led to the stairs, which led to Pleecy's bedroom, and to a 'laundry room', which Neeka had all to herself.

A knock at the door as the music began the final set of lyrics: Neeka activated her disguise and walked four legged and royal-looking as a feline to the door. "Who is it?" she said through her collar: all she had to do was think to 'talk.'

"It's Dib. Uhm, Pleecy invited me over."

Neeka backed away and grabbed a rope hanging from the knob in her teeth and yanked, backing up as she tugged, until the knob twisted and opened, seemingly, on its own.

Dib looked around. "Hello?"

"Greetings," said a tiny, robotic sounding voice. Dib jumped. "Down here, Sir."

He looked down…and almost freaked out. **(eAo) **"Uh…._cat?_"

Neeka meowed, tilting her head back a little. "Yes?"

"Did you just…_talk?_ Or am I hallucinating again?"

"None of the above. You see, this collar Master made me-"she pulled back some fur on her neck."-lets me talk by thinking. Master's father didn't want her to be lonely and got her a kitten. Then she made me this collar." Neeka smiled at the programmed memories that activated when she was disguised.

"So you're Pleecy's talking…cat?"

"More or less. Please, come in! Master's downstairs in her labs."

"Labs?"

"Well, her father IS a scientist…" Neeka said rather casually.

"Oh, right. Will she be up soon?" By now, the music had ended.

"Hola Cenyor!" Pleecy seemed to appear out of nowhere. Which, pretty much, she did, since she teleported from her lower labs. Dib turned around and there was Pleecy, disguised, in the middle of the living room.

"How'd she-…?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you! I'm also a magician!"

"Uh…Oh! That's cool…" ** (O.e) **Even though he was surprised, Dib tried sounding friendly.

Pleecy sighed. "I freaked you out, huh?" He sighed and nodded. "Oh, figured. Sorry about that…" Pleecy cleared her throat and changed the subject. "Now, about your uh, evidence-"

"Oh yeah! Hold on!" Suddenly enthusiastic, Dib rushed outside while Pleecy held the kitchen door open. He soon came back in, hauling a small wagon filled with photos, boxes, disks, and other random pieces of 'alien proof'.

"Well that's quite a menagerie of proof you got there, Dib." Pleecy said with a bit of sarcasm.

As Dib pulled the wagon in the kitchen, a robotic talon extended from the wall and placed two teacups, sugar, and a tea kettle on a table along the right wall. Dib set the wagon handle down and looked around Pleecy's kitchen. Seemed normal. Shelves and counters lined the left wall. A sink and fridge were along the far wall, with cabinets over the sink and beside the fridge. The floor was alternating yellow-and-white tiles. The room almost had a country feel.

Pleecy sat down and poured herself some tea, _careful_ to give herself a straw. "Green tea, Dib?"

"Uh, sure. I don't think I've had tea before." He sprinkled a pinch of sugar in his cup.

"You must have a lot of evidence to have to have lugged it here in a wagon," Pleecy said in her best 'impressed-girl' tone. Neeka jumped in her lap.

"Of course I would! I have tons of free time, no friends, and an alien in my Skool bent on taking over the world! It's not like anyone wants to help me..."

"I see. It sounds lonely, not having any help with this, this..."

"He's an alien! And yes, actually, i-it does get kinda lonely, not having any friends. But that's because everyone at Skool thinks I'm crazy! It's true I _know_ what I'm talking about..." Dib scowled and folded his arms.

They sipped idly at the tea and chatted a while before Dib had to go home. Pleecy didn't get to look in the wagon during that visit, but over Easter break the two met often. Pleecy even helped him examine photos and other things. It was the first time since Tak that Dib thought someone believed him, maybe even thought of him as a friend...

iLiLiLiL

...The next week was like that, Pleecy and Dib looking at evidence, mainly photos. Soon, Pleecy secretly grew bored with the charade she was putting on just to get information from the boy, but the kid _did_ grow on her after a while. He reminded her of her early years. _Blissful ignorance..._

How she yearned for it once again...

One day became the most ironic day Pleecy could think of in all of her days working for the Armada.

iLiLiLiL

The duo was comparing a photo of Zim's organs with normal human biology one day over break...

"You see, Dib, the skeletal structures are similar, inferring that these 'Irkens,' as you call them, are insectoid-humanoid-" Pleecy heard her videophone ring in the living room. "Hold that thought." She stood and left the kitchen. Neeka was napping by the kitchen door leading to the living room.

Dib passed the time she was gone by looking through some photos.

_*What's taking so long? Who's she talk-*_ "Ow!" He sucked on one of his left fingers until he thought the paper-cut stopped bleeding. "What's she doing in there?" He crept over to the cracked door and tried to see in the living room.

"-quite well here. No one thinks I'm weird and I'm blending in nicely. I've already made some friends!" he heard Pleecy say joyously. She was standing before her T.V., where a shadowy figure showed on the screen. It was tall and almost resembled what Membrane's silluette would look like. It had purple eyes. The room was dully lit.

"Aw, that's good!" said the figure. Dib thought he heard that voice before, but where? "It's nice to know you're getting along well with everyone. Well, I have to go, I have an experiment to monitor..." Dib thought he saw the figure wink. Dib backed away from the cracked door.

"Was that her dad? Gaaaah!" He felt the floor move out from under him, and he found himself falling through a long, dark tunnel.

He hit the floor, gasping for the air that was knocked out of him, as a few lights flickered on. "What the-!" He managed to say.

Meanwhile, Pleecy was turning off the T.V. 'Goodbye, My Tallest..." She said with a sly tone.

Neeka meowed a loud alarm, and Pleecy turned around in time to hear yelling coming from a hole made by a missing set of tiles in the kitchen floor.

Down in Pleecy's chemical lab, Dib wandered around in awe. Either she had _very_ advanced tech, probably from her dad, _or..._

The lab resembled the kitchen mixed with a human chemical lab mixed with an advanced version of Zim's base. The walls had similar robotic pipes like Zim and Tak's bases, but there were common items in it, like test tubes and microscopes.

"Wait, is she-" he was cut off as Pleecy fell from the tube he came from, and landed catlike on her feet, bending her knees and putting down a hand to steady herself.

Dib turned around as she said," Dib, how'd you-"

"Stay back, Ah!" Dib stumbled. He tried to steady himself, but he pulled some tubes out of a wooden holder instead, and they fell with him. Pleecy watched as the viles shattered and their former-contents formed small puddles on Dib and the lab floor.

"Dib!" She ran over and checked his pulse. _*Good, he's fine. Just unconscious. Now, what chemicals did he...* _She looked over at the counter the tubes fell from. "Oh, Irk, of all the..." her voice trailed off as she realized what the test tubes held and what she had been doing at _that particular counter._

Just _great, more_ to risk blowing her cover...

**Author's Note- mwuhahah! cliff hanger! Gawd I cliff hangers! thanks for reading!...that is, if anyone even _reads_ it XD. Once I get to Chapter 6 or 8, I may not be posting chapters as much, since I have to still do some thinking ^.^ ( BTW if you've read ahead on Youtube, NO SPOILERS! XD) **


	5. Two Days Later

…Dib was in a daze when he came to. He felt something licking his face. His vision was mostly a blur, and he felt too weak to move. What he saw as a black blur on top of him was actually Neeka, who had noticed him begin to stir. She had started licking his face to help, like a _normal_ Earth cat might do.

She meowed and waved her tail over his face. "Dib? Dib, do you feel...okay?" She hesitated on the last word.

His vision cleared up slightly over the minutes. It was enough for his to see where he was:

He was lying on a stretcher in a long, rectangle-shaped, hospital styled room with walls that were lined with shelves, a few sinks, and other stretchers. The walls were primarily red like Zim's base, and an auto-door was in the right upper corner along the wall, just a few feet from him. Dib was at the far right end, the last bed before the door. There were plastic, waiting-room-styled chairs by the door lining the far wall for a few feet. The ceiling was also like the ceiling in Zim's base, covered in robotic pipes and wires. _This room was in the Irken styling..._

It was then that Dib noticed monitors set up on either side of the bed and some cords attached to them. He followed the cords with his eyes. The cords led to IV's in his arms. A heart monitor was on one of his right fingers...wait, was his hand..._green?_ Gah!

Neeka placed her paws firmly on his shoulders as he tried sitting up. "Let me up! What happened? Where am I?"

"Calm down Dib, you'll make yourself faint again! Calm-" she reared up"-down!" and slammed her paws down, pinning Dib to the stretcher. "Now look, Dib," Neeka said calmly, "You might be feeling a bit...'funny' right now, but Master will explain, just be patient and stay calm. She'll help you, she will..." Neeka kept him pinned down until he wore himself out and laid down. He felt a bit woozy after struggling.

After some time, Dib fell asleep, and Neeka curled up at the end of the bed...

iLiLiLiLiL

"How's he doing?"

"He was trying to sit up earlier."

"Well, he seems fine now." Dib heard a few female voices as he awakened again.

"Oh, he's stirring!"

"Dib? Dib, can you look here?" His vision cleared over time again as a bright light shined in his eyes. It was Pleecy, disguised, checking his eyes with a flashlight.

"Ugh, m-my head hurts. Pleecy? What happened? Did I black out or something?"

"Well, yes and no, Dib. Don't freak out, but-" she picked up a mirror and held it up in front of Dib.

His eyes widened as he saw the Irken in the mirror copy him. It had the same clothes on, the same colored eyes but Irken, and it had antennas that resembled his hair.

Dib blinked. _His reflection blinked._

Pleecy put down the mirror. Dib seemed horrified, and his eyes appeared to be tearing up...

iLiLiLiLiL

Dib sat on the stretcher's edge while Pleecy prodded his antennas to make them flinch.

"Well, your muscles and nerves seem fine."

"What happened, Pleecy? I-…I remember stumbling over, then..."

"It's okay, Dib. You freaked out when you found my chemical lab. You made some test tubes fall when you tried to steady yourself. They were a few specific chemicals I was using in an experiment to freak out Zim by temporarily changing him into a human." Pleecy chuckled. "They got in a cut on your finger, I _think,_ and, well, seem to have had an inverting effect on human DNA..._how curious."_

"So, what? I an-"

"No,no, no! You're not an Irken 'til there's a PAK on your back!" Pleecy used a wall clock to check his pulse.

"A PAK? Like that thing on Z-"Pleecy flicked his head. "-Ow! Hey!"

"Just checking the nervous system, ehehe..." she laughed nervously. "Working properly!"

"You can change me back, right!" Dib said hopefully.

"If I have the right ingredients, yes, but-"

"There's someone at the front door," her computer piped up. A screen came down, showing a young girl about Dib's age at the door. Her skin was a darker shade of peach than his, and she had black boots and pants. A black vest, the bottom edge and long open sleeve ends bordered in light blue, overlapped a blue shirt with an indigo peace sign. The vest's collar was a green triangle pointing down with a smaller yellow triangle inside. The smaller yellow triangle had a light blue swirl inside it, the same shape as the swirl on Neeka's head. She had gray eyes and gold earrings. A light blue swirl dangled from each earring. Her hair was black. Her bangs were shaped like the right side of a ying-yang symbol, the 'tail' hanging in her right eye. A light blue stripe bordered the outline of the bangs. The shoulder-length hair in back had two terra-cotta stripes going down vertically. She had goggles on her head. The frames that held the lenses were purple and the rest of the frames and the lenses were gray. She stood patiently at the door, tapping her foot with her arms crossed.

"Open the door, computer! Send her down!"

"Who's she-?" On the screen, Dib watched Neeka let the girl in the same way he was let in.

"That's Ley. She's a good friend of mine. She'll help," Pleecy said, smiling. She went back to checking his vitals until a meow was heard at the door to the medical bay. "It's open!"

The auto-door opened, and Neeka and Ley stood in the doorway. "Ok, Pleecy, who is it you wanted me to..." her voice trailed off as she walked in the room and saw Dib. "Uh, well, who's this?" For a girl, she had a lower voice.

"This is Dib," Pleecy motioned to him, "kinda..."

"What do you mean, 'kinda'?" Pleecy explained what had happened since she had enrolled at Skool. "Ok, why would you put a base entrance _in the kitchen floor_, anyway? Ley sighed. "What chemicals were you using?"

"Well..." Pleecy tapped her chin in thought, "I know I used a few amino-acid-or-DNA-inverting ingredients, and I never got to try the solution on a cell _with_ the temporary ingredient _added,_ so _who knows_ if it would have worked anyway, hmm..." She looked up and closed her eyes in thought as well.

"_Great_. So which chemicals were knocked over?"

"Um...the 3 main chemicals and a few others, I think. There may have been others. Either way, it was enough for _this _to happen." She looked at Ley.

"Have you started an antidote or anything yet?"

"I've tweaked around with one for the past few days, but the digital simulator says it's lacking a few ingredients." Dib wasn't sure what they were talking about by now...

"Like...?" Ley's eyes widened in slight alarm.

"Well...It seems I need _Dracon's Root_, _Griffifh_ **(Grif-iff)** _Claw Diamond_ dust-"

_"What?"_

"Yea, I know, it's crazy! There were 2 minerals, 3 herbs, 5 chemicals or extracts...I figured you might have the plants we need if I didn't have 'em..."

"Well, it depends. Which plants? I can't get _Dracon's Root_ at home, but I know where we COULD get it..." Ley said wearily.

Pleecy motioned for Ley to follow her to the elevator: she could tell where this might lead to.

Just then Neeka and Gaz, _of all people, Gaz_, came down in the elevator. Gaz walked in the room.

"Neeka, please take Ley down to the Chem Lab," Pleecy said. "Gaz, how and why-"

Neeka and Ley left as Gaz cut her off. "-You called and said Dib was too sick to be moved. Dad was about to come down here and get Dib _himself_, but I said it'd be best for _everyone_ if he at least worked _with_ you to help Dib. He didn't think you could fix him yourself, and I figured it'd be a bad thing if _he_ came and saw _your_ labs, am I right?" Gaz said in a sarcastic tone and smirked, folding her arms.

Pleecy's eyes widened.

"Gaz, what do mean? I mean, are you implying that-_oh, right..." _Dib said.

"How did you..." Pleecy's voice trailed off.

"_No one_ battles me in VPH2 multiplayer _that_ well without some really crazy codes. You weren't using any codes, I know that for sure. I figured that when you said Dib got sick you_ meant_ he got his big annoying paranormal head into trouble, probably found something weird, am I right?"

Pleecy hung her head momentarily from a mixture of mental defeat **(how the Irk? XD),** annoyance, and regret. She looked over her shoulder at Dib, then back at Gaz. "I see...Well, I have to go talk to Ley and Neeka. _Don't_ mess with anything, _please?"_ She entered the elevator and went down to her Chem Lab.

Gaz walked over to Dib and pulled over one of the plastic chairs.

"Gaz, what did you mean?" Dib asked meekly, as if he didn't want to believe his ears.

"You _are_ blind if you haven't thought she's like whatshisname yet."

_"Zim?_ Pleecy like...well ya. Her house does look like his, and her 'labs' are well, huh..."

Gaz opened her eyes partially and looked him over. "Guess you really are too 'sick' to move, huh?..." There was an awkward silence…

"...S-so, she's an...an alien? I should've seen that coming _of course she is!_ I mean, since when does _anyone_ believe _me_ anyway, and since when does the 'child' of a scientist have their _own _labs?"

"You have labs," Gaz stated monotonously.

"Oh, yea. But this tech-"

"What's _wrong_ with you, Dib?" Gaz demanded, closing her eyes.

"Huh?"

"You're acting all..._not crazy._ You're different."

"Well of course I'm different! _Look at me!_ I've been turned into a frickin' Irken! I look just like Zi-"

"I didn't _mean _like _that._ You look all depressed. Normally you'd be taking pictures and accusing someone of something weird or stupid..."

"Well, I-I..." he sighed. "I don't know. I mean, I feel weak, and not like myself. _I feel dirty!"_ He shuddered and looked at his sister with his big, brown, Irken eyes.

Gaz saw the lack of will in her brother's eyes, _so she backhanded him._ It was a lighter hit than her usual fits-of-anger smacks, but it was still hard.

"_Yow_! What was _that_ for?"

"To snap you out of it! Quit being a whiner! She said she's going to help you and I'll make sure that she does," the computer handed Gaz a metal collar. She forced it on Dib despite his reluctance and head-size and activated it when she was done.

Dib looked like himself again before he touched the collar quizzically and the holo-disguise flickered and fizzled away. "It's like Tak's disguise," he said in awe. Think of what he could do with _this_ kind of technology!

"Almost," said the computer. "The collar's programmed to activate when it recognizes a pre-programmed fingerprint. Tak's disguise was a few models old."

"Really? And her disguise tricked me! Obsessive Compulsive Dib! Geez, this must be a _really_ advanced disguise, then..." How disgusting, the aliens trying to conquer his home have this advanced technology!

Gaz started playing her GS2 while Dib fiddled with the collar.

_*That's the brother I know...*_ She smiled to herself. 3

**Author's Note-Yes, I know, Dib and Gaz may have been a bit OOC. Oh well :P. Thanks for reading! ^FT^**


	6. Plans and Idiots

Pleecy, Neeka **(both undisguised), **and Ley were watching a digital simulation program on a very large screen in Pleecy's Holo-Interface Room.

"See, Ley? The computer _has_ an antidote recipe, but I don't have _half_ these ingredients!" Pleecy gestured at the screen with an open hand as a long list of Irken writing appeared onscreen.

"Did you try adding the temporary ingredient to the mix of what he knocked over and-"

"Uh-uh! Nope! No, it wouldn't do any good. _If anything,_ it would _temporarily _make him human again. That is, if I even _knew exactly _what he absorbed, and there's no way I can know _exactly," _Pleecy griped as Gaz came out of the elevator.

Hearing what Pleecy had said, Gaz crossed her arms and said, with an annoyed tone **(as usual)**, "Why don't you just inject him with this stupid temporary thing and get it over with?"

"Sorry, but it's not that simple, either, I'm afraid. That would have no effect on its own," Pleecy turned her head toward Gaz, "By itself, the chemical would have nothing to make temporary in the first place."

"How far along has he changed, anyway?" Ley asked.

"Just his outside," Pleecy hit a button on the keyboard beside her. Multiple X-rays of human organs appeared onscreen: Dib's organs. "As far as he is now took about 2 Earth days to occur. His insides will take much longer to change, but if he metamorphoses completely, he'll have to be hooked up to a PAK. Irken brains have been bred over the millennia to only handle a few select things, while human brains handle _everything. _His new 'Irken brain' wouldn't be able to handle the controls alone, so it would be like his PAK was removed. He wouldn't survive long without one. _But _he _can't_ be changed back if he was hooked up to a PAK. Irken brains are dependent on PAKs nowadays, but a human body wouldn't be able to handle a PAK unless it was born with it, but even _then_ it would be very hard on a human body. Dib's half-matured-naturally-born-human body would most certainly reject it or worse, since PAK programming tells it to automatically take control over more than half a brain's controls."

"So_, now _what?" demanded Gaz, "I swear, Pleecy, if you can't fix him-"

"Never said that! Never said that!" Pleecy held up her hands for Gaz to stop her advance.

"So, how long do we have?" asked Ley, trying to lessen the tension in the room.

"Uhm…anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks, or more. Not sure exactly. Even the simulator's unsure."

Ley walked over to the screen, typed on the keyboard a few seconds, and the list reappeared onscreen. She studied the foreign list. "I have a few of these at home. What about you?"

"Same. I can get the honey, _snap dragons, Irk Maple _leaves, and _Meekrobian Mint_ leaf extract in my greenhouses."

"I have the Venatian Roses, plus a few others here."

"Really? I didn't think people could export things from Venat."

"Seeds are hard to get. I can also get the pollen chemicals if I can get the proteins and such separated, but I would need some time."

"Okay. We should probably get what we have now together."

"How can I help?" Gaz said, annoyed.

"Well…" Pleecy paused. "I'm expecting someone to stop by my base soon. You'll have to fill her in, if you don't mind." Pleecy looked her dead in the eye, well, as much in the eyes as one could look _Gaz._ "But more importantly, _do __not__ let your brother give in. _This is as much a mental problem as a physical problem. He might not ever be the same again if he accepts his fate now. If he thinks he's stuck this way, for example, the antidote may not have an effect: his body might subconsciously reject it. Keep reminding him that he. Is. A. _Human,"_ she said sternly.

Gaz mulled this over: Dib not being the same _ever _again _might_ be a good thing…no, probably not. The Rightful Order would glitch like a hacked videogame. Can't have that, now can we? _Although…_ "…Fine," Gaz finally said, "Who are you expecting?"

"Her name's Diz. She has purple eyes, you can't miss her. You'll know her when you see her. I'll meet you in the Botany Labs, Ley," Pleecy called as Ley entered the elevator along the left wall. "If you wouldn't mind keeping an eye on your brother, Gaz-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll play Dib-Sitter. But you _better_ get him back to normal, or _so help me I'll-"_

"Kill me later, Gaz! I have work to do!" Pleecy chuckled manically as the part of the floor she stood on began lowering down like an elevator and disappeared under the rest of the floor.

Neeka escorted Gaz back to the Medical Bay. _*Now that I think about it, since when would an _alien care_ about_ my_ annoying brother?* _Gaz thought to herself as the elevator climbed the shaft. She shrugged and started playing her G.S.2.

iLiLiLiLiLiL

Ley opened the front door and was about to head home when she saw the cute green dog sitting on Pleecy's front steps holding a cupcake. He looked up. "Hiya! Mah Masta wantsta talk wit da new lady!"

"Lady?...Oh, you mean Pleecy, right?"

"Yus! Wait…" he hummed an _'I don't know'_ and shrugged.

Ley sighed. "I'll take that as a yes."

iLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy was in her Botany Lab juicing _Meekrobian Mint_ leaves. She and Ley had just finished going over _who_ will contribute _what_ to the antidote when the computer showed her a screen showing Ley and the 'dog' at the door just as Ley said, "Pleecy, you're needed at the door," and left the 'dog' for home.

Pleecy, disguised, came up the elevator into the kitchen and then entered the Living Room. Neeka, also disguised, was watching the _"Scary Monkey Show"_ with undisguised Gir on the couch to keep him from freaking out or…well, just _being Gir._

"Gir, who are you here? I definitely don't have time to play or anything-"

"Lady! Masta wantsta see ya!" Gir hooped off the couch, smiling. **(^FT^)**

Pleecy sighed. "Manual Memory Override Mode. Code _28 Miyuki_."

Gir's eyes turned red and her stiffened, saluted. "Override Code accepted, Ma'am. Unit memory banks accessed."

"Now then, _what_ does your master want to talk with me about?"

"Master Zim only said he wanted me to ask for you to come to his base, Ma'am. An escort, I assume."

"Thank you, Gir. At ease."

Gir sat on the couch, eyes still red.

"Neeka, go down and finish preparing and gathering the ingredients, please."

"Yes, Master," Neeka said calmly. She undisguised herself, walked into the kitchen, and went down to finish gathering a few other ingredients.

"Give me a minute, Gir. Put your disguise back on, and I'll be back up in a few minutes." She turned and left.

iLiLiLiLiLiL

It wasn't long before the somehow-still-obedient Gir was leading Pleecy to his Master's base. Ley still needed time, so Pleecy thought this would help her pass the time until she was done. It was only a few minutes before the disguised duo reached the picket fence marking Zim's lawn.

Pleecy glanced at each gnome. She had the feeling she was being watched as she started up the sidewalk. IN the middle of the sidewalk, she stopped, looked at the gnomes again, and distorted their sight by psychically tweaking with the machinery inside the eyes. All four fired and shot the gnome across from it, stunning it. Pleecy chuckled as she waited with Gir for the door to open.

It opened slowly and seemingly by itself. Pleecy looked at it curiously, and then looked at the inside of the house. She sighed, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. _*Con-spi-cu-ous,"_ she thought. She stepped into the doorway. _*So, where is he?* _She sensed something above her before she heard an eerie male voice ring out.

"You do horribly at disguising yourself, y'know."

"Pardon?" she asked the air.

"What are you doing here? Another invader is not-"

Pleecy cut the voice off. "Okay, _look._ _I have important crap to do_," she said angrily as a mechanical spider leg blocked the door behind her. "So, if you'll excuse me…" she turned around, saw the spider leg, and scowled, narrowing her eyes.

Zim lowered himself from the ceiling by his other three spider legs.

Pleecy tilted her head rightwards as the leg retracted just enough for her to see him in the corner of her eyes. _" 'Sup?" _she grinned. "Didn't realize this was your place, uhm… I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

"_I AM ZIIIM!_ Now answer me, stink female!"

Stink female?-"

"Answer my question! Why are you on Earth? The Tallests' know this planet is _mine_ to conquer, so why are you here?" he demanded, pointing at her.

"Uhm, I was _born_ here…?"

"Liar! The Irken Armada's Insignia is clear as day on your outfit, and I saw your PAK! It's undisguised." He said, stepping closer.

She whirled around: he was only a few feet away.

She smirked. "Are you sure you're sane?"

"Don't toy with me. _Let me guess_, you're here to steal my mission _too_, aren't you?"

"NO, Zim, I-"

"Aren't you?"

"I said-"

"_AREN'T YOU?"_

She waited a moment for what she last said to sink in…

"…Wait, 'no?' Who are ?"

"You _already_ know my _name. __How__ can you __not__ figure it out?"_ she said, surprised.

He shrugged.

"Former A.I.D. to the Tallest…"

"…"

"Mystic…"

"…"

"Blue skin…!"

"hmm…"

"Wanted in a few solar systems, trusted highly and valued by the Tallests, conqueror of at least 7 planets…"

Hmm-hmm…"

"Only Blue Irken of this generation!" she said, exasperatedly. How can he not know by now?

"…" Zim thought for a minute. His eyes narrowed. ""Invader Pleecy…"

"The one and only," Pleecy said proudly, and put her fists at her hips.

In the blink of an eye, Zim grabbed her collar, extended his spider legs, and slammed Pleecy against the left wall with a spider leg at her throat. "Why'd they send _you __HERE_, of all places? DidIdosomethingwrong-…grr, I'm conquering this filthy ball of-"

"Look, I'm not _sure_ why, okay?"

"Liar!"

Pleecy's eyes glittered slightly, and Zim felt calmer. She pushed him away with her own spider legs, falling on the couch.

He landed on the floor, knees bending to break his fall, right hand down to steady himself, sliding across the room. He stopped inches from the T.V. "Why are you here?" he pursued.

Pleecy stood up, brushing herself off. "Irk, if I know. They said something about an Invader Checkpoint, I think."

Zim mulled this over in his amazing head. "Hmm…a Checkpoint, out here? How would coming-and-going invaders go unnoticed? And how can they know how many planets are out here, ripe for conquer?"

"Scouts, and that's why I'm here, _and_ why they're sending a Tactics Commander after me. _But…" _she paused, contemplating whether she should tell this defect the situation. She rubbed her chin. "…There is a problem…"

"Huh?"

"There was…an, 'accident'…in my Chemical Lab, so now…now I have some 'shopping' to do…"

"Uhm, ok then…?" Zim said, confused. "Experiment-gone-wrong?"

"Kind of…"

Zim blinked in realization.

Simultaneously, they said, "The Dib hyuuman."

"Uh-huh…" Pleecy sighed.

"What happened, you turn him inside-out or something? 'Cause I'll pay you big monies for a picture." Zim joked. He smirked and stifled a laugh.

Pleecy rolled her eyes and grinned. "I inverted his DNA. Now we have anywhere from three Earth days to 3 Earth weeks or more before he'll need a PAK."

Zim's eyes widened… "…Ahhh-hahahahahahaha! Ehaha! Hahahahahahaha!" Zim cackled. "Ehh-haha! You're kidding me? Y-you turned him into an-_Eha!_-an Irken! I'd pay even _more_ monies to see _that!_ _Bwuah-hahahahaha!_ Ah," He wiped a tear from his eye. "That's funny."

iLiLiLiLiLiL

As Pleecy had turned to leave, Zim had asked about what she did to Gir.

She explained that she couldn't understand what the insane robot wanted, so she used one of the special command codes Tallests' A.I.D.s' are taught, used to make any technology with an Irken power core operate properly as needed, etc. She wasn't permitted to tell him any more about the subject, thanks to the pledges A.I.D.s were made to take during their terms. She restored Gir to his ridiculous self by saying the Memory Override Code backwards and headed home, leaving Zim to his insane S.I.R. Unit's antics.

**Author's Note-Yus! First action scene…kinda…thanks for reading ^FT^ 3 These last few chapters have been a bit long, I know, but I originally had them split in 2 when I was planning on posting them on YouTube. The rest won't be as long, (I hope XD) I promise. **


	7. Scientists Map To The Edge of The Galaxy

Pleecy returned to her labs to find that Neeka and Ley had finished gathering the ingredients the trio had handy. Pleecy wound up finding Ley in the Planetarium Room. **(Neeka and Pleecy = undisguised this chapter XD) **

The Planetarium was a _very large_, spherical room set on a gyroscope with a system of circular hovercraft porches. **(As seen in a few episodes, such as "Megadoomer"- the Tallests rode one, but without railings in the beginning.) **A control panel next to the door in the hallway leading to the room could be used to program what one wanted to be shown or mapped out on the interior: the interior was covered in screens, so the room was a giant globular T.V. resembling Zim's observatory, just spherical.

Ley was high up on a hover-porch in the top left corner **(As much as a corner as a globe can have anyway XD)** when Pleecy walked in and stood on the platform, which jutted out in front of the door for about 6 sq. ft. She was scrutinizing a particular star glanced at the system she was examining. The maps looked like the maps from the Great Assigning, but with less dashed lines. Wait, what star system is…? "Why the sudden interest in the Venatian Star?" Pleecy said, smirking sarcastically.

"I've been looking for probably an hour, but Venat's not marked on here," Ley said, rubbing her chin. Her face was just a few inches from the screen, where she was looking at the Venatian Star and trying to convince herself she has the co-ordinates for Venat correctly memorized.

"Nope, not anymore. It was removed from Irk maps a few decades back and replaced with a 'Dead Zone' Marker. Everyone was paranoid and thought it was 'too dangerous to pay attention to.' Hah!" Pleecy scoffed after making two different sets of quotation marks with her fingers mockingly.

"That makes. No sense."

"I know right?" Pleecy chuckled. A hover-porch zoomed to the platform and rose up in a few seconds next to Ley's after Pleecy mounted it. The two porches merged together so that Pleecy was to Ley's left and the duo was on the same elliptical hover-porch. "If I remember correctly," she said, leaning over the railing, "it should be…uhm, about right," she scanned the map, mentally kicking herself for forgetting where a planet was. _*Frickin' bull crap...* _she thought."Ah, there it is. Here!" She touched her finger tip to a spot about two inches from the icon of the Red Giant, her head against Ley's.

"No wonder it's a tropical planet," Ley said in a hushed tone.

"There ya go. Why were you lookin' for Venat, anyway?"

Ley sighed, hesitating. "...It's the only place we can get _Dracon's Root-_"

"_What?"_ Pleecy thundered. She fell over the railing, but saved herself when she grabbed the railing with her right hand and used two spider legs to hoist herself back up. "Do you _KNOW _how frickin' _dangerous_ Venat can be? Most of the plant species aren't even _plants!_ It's like Hender's Island* on _frickin' steroids_, especially when you take into account all the different toxins life made up ther-"

'Yes, I know how horrid Venat can be, Pleecy. Hender's Island* is nothing in comparison," Ley said, tilting her head up, eyes closed.

"And where _exactly_ does _Dracon's Root_ grow? Plus, isn't_ it_ poisonous _too?_" Pleecy scowled and looked at the _hyuuman_. One of her antennas twitched in annoyance.

"If I remember correctly, they grow best in extreme heat, more specifically volcanoes or lava fields, usually in magma chamber branch-off tunnels-"

_"WHAT?"_ Pleecy thundered again. Her mark subconsciously flickered.

"Calm down, Pleecy. Remember what the blue moon does to you," Ley said calmly, head still tilted up, eyes still closed. She seemed meditative.

Pleecy closed her eyes and took a deep breath, finally realizing the flickering. It stopped when she exhaled. "Computer, wormhole map."

"Galactic or dimensional?"

"Galactic. _Now."_

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Neeka walked into a small rectangle-shaped lab with a large screen occupying one wall with cabinets under it: it was Pleecy's holo-interface room, the room from Gaz and Pleecy's earlier discussion. Pleecy and Ley stood before the screen. The route they planned to take (If all went well, and let's face it, nothing ever did…) was mapped out on the screen.

They had finally agreed on a game plan:

1) Use a galactic wormhole as a shortcut to a black market bazaar Pleecy knew about (Best not to ask, Ley decided.) Gather supplies and a few other ingredients. Buy _Griffifh__ Claw Diamond(s)._ (Or in dust-form if they have any).

2) Take 1-day trip to Venat because the ship would need time to recharge the wormhole-opening program/equipment before making another wormhole jump.

3) Risk lives by heading to and into nearest volcano or lava field, most likely Mt. Uriel. Obtain _Dracon's Root_. _Get off planet alive and ASAP._

4) Take wormhole back to Earth.

Neeka walked over and handed Ley an apple, Pleecy a starfruit-looking thing from Meekrob.

"Here's hoping," Pleecy said, and the pair looked at each other solemnly and toasted their fruits like drinks.

**Author's Note- Hender's** **Island: Island on which the book "Fragment" by Warren Fahy is centered. Basically its species evolved waaay differently than the rest of the planet- Arthopod-like and fend for yourself pretty much. _Everything vs. Everything._ Epic book :P I couldn't put it down! Only read if you like fight scenes XD anyway, Thanks for reading! ^FT^**

**Update: 2-18-12 Yea, I might not post a new chapter for a while. MAJOR WRITER'S BLOCK e.o plus other crap goin' on, so I don't have much time to actually write the next few chapters. I'l get to it XD**


	8. Ley's Ship part 1

Pleecy and Ley came up the elevator to Pleecy's 'attic.' The elevator was in the right upper corner of her docking bay. Before them was a large Voot Cruiser at least 1.5 times larger than Zims'. Pleecy pulled out a key and popped the trunk. The Voot Cruiser beeped like a car being unlocked, *Beep-beep!*

Ley walked over and looked in the trunk. "Wait, we're taking _your _ship? Sorry Pleecy but it won't be big enough."

"_How _will it not be _big enough?" _Pleecy challenged.

"Because this may not be able to hold three people, plus supplies, and yours isn't very streamlined, either."

"You said 'three'," Pleecy stated coldly. 'Who _else_ is going?" She had an annoyed edge in her voice, like Gaz would have when she's angry, almost like Pleecy had to deal with a festering old wound: plus, _they never agreed to that!_

"Well, it would be best if we take Neeka or Star with us, but Neeka is still war-programmed, I believe?"

"Well, yea, I guess she is..." She said angrily. Pleecy felt derpish* and solemn. It probably would be best to have a S.I.R. unit accompany them, who knows what might happen. Murphy's Law. Oh well.

"Pleecy, it'd be safer to have a S.I.R. unit accompany us, just in case," Ley said, mistaking her pained expression for disapproval. She studied Pleecy, "Are you feeling okay?"

"Yes, yes," Pleecy grumbled, rubbing her forehead, sweating slightly and making a strained face. "So then, whose ship are we going to take? Taks' is still unsuitable for flying, let alone a wormhole jump, and Zims' is a _faaar _cry from being better suited than _mine_..."

"We'll take mine," Ley said with furrowed brow and a small, reminiscent smile.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Dib was laying down on the stretcher, listening to the radio blurt out "Waiting for the End" by Linkin Park, messing nonchalantly with a 'Rubics Pyramid' he found on a shelf of miscellaneous knick-knacks above and to the left of his head. Pleecy had turned on an Earth radio 'to make it feel homier' and said that she would send down lunch to him later.

_*Who makes a Rubics Cube in the shape of a pyramid?* _he thought, dazed and bored.

Being bored out of his still pitiful-hyuuman mind, he failed to notice the white rabbit with a big purple bow that had hopped in, pushed a levitating tray up next to the stretcher, then left.

Dib rolled over onto his right side, noticed the tray, sat up, and scrutinized the plate sitting on it. There was a glass of mineral water and two identical sandwiches, except for the fact that one had an Irken military insignia on it.

Dib sighed, staring sadly at the two, wondering which he could eat without upsetting his stomach, er, sqeedly-smooch, er, oh whatever...

**Author's Note-Thanks to justcallme-b-e-u-tiful and TearsxOfxBlood for favoriting! I realize these last few chapters have been short compared to the other huge chapters, but I'm having Writer's Block! Reviews might help, idk XD Plus I keep getting epic ideas for stories XD curse my epically overactive mind ^FT^ Anyway, Thanks for Reading! Btw Derp(ish) is a word commonly used at my school. It's usually a filler word, but in this case it's like insane or stupid, idk. Something like that. XD**


	9. Ley's Ship part 2

Pleecy, disguised, had teleported the duo as far as Leys' front door, but no further. Ley didn't want them to be teleported any farther than her door so she could tell her parents she was going to leave and help Pleecy and so that the strained blue Irken could rest her mind temporarily. Ley had noticed Pleecys' distress earlier: she assumed it was because of the way blue moons, or most moon phases for that matter, affected Mystics and some other energy beings. Earth was about to have a blue moon, so they would _have _to leave before then: Untrained Mystics could go berserk, their powers overwhelming their will for the time being of the blue moon or even a full moon at times! Thankfully, Mystics with proper training usually only got as much as _major,_ major headaches and energy shortages, which Pleecy had been experiencing for the past day or so.

Now the pair was coming up the cylindrical, clear elevator in Leys' home, up to the garage her parents let her install as the new top level.

It opened to a dark, spacious-appearing room. Pleecy's eyes and mark faintly glowed their respective colors out of instinct. They both stepped into the unlit room, Ley moving to her left until she met the wall. She ran her hand along the wall slowly, keeping her hand above the barely noticeable outline of cabinets and counters. Pleecy turned her head in Leys' direction, scarcely lighting the area.

"Pleecy, you don't need to do that, y'know. I can find the switch on my- Ah! Here it is." Sets of overhead fluorescent lights flickered on, revealing a huge, Earth styled car garage with an enormous garage door taking up most of the far wall. The floor was blue-hued concrete, and the garage was the same color. Both side walls were white with counters and kitchen cabinets along the floor, a few assorted machine parts and cans strewn over some of the counters and some cords sticking out cabinet doors. Strange machine parts were strung along the walls and on parts of the ceiling closer to the walls, as well.

Beside the right wall and its various counters and such sat…a massive_, very odd_ ship. It was almost as long as the room itself and a little bit wider than a Voot Cruiser. It could have easily been 8 feet tall. The body of the ship was a light blue hue and almost a bean shape, but the front was a sunny-colored cockpit with a _very_ unusual shape: It was pointed, with a clear windshield revealing a blue hued cockpit not unlike a larger version of Taks' ships' cockpit. The point had a small solid diamond shape on it, presumably to help hold it together. The cockpit frame was a shape not unlike a cone that had spikes cut into the flat part: curved spikes giving the ship a Luxray*-mane all around. The mane was the color of reds, oranges, and yellows all tie-dyed together in a sunny appearance, mainly a metallic yellow-orange. This mane had a large, neon-sky-blue, left-swirling spiral on it, similar to Leys' earrings: the Pacifist insignia. Under the spike-mane, the inward-sloping part of the bean shape was made of metal rings that had a few cords or pipes connecting some. A bluish-grey foot-tall dorsal fin rose up from the rings, rising up to meet the spike-mane. A large window occupied both sides of the bean-body directly after the metal rings, displaying the inside of the ship's body: a row of leather, blue tinged seats like you'd see on an airplane. The rear of the ship had another large window, showing how much room there really was for luggage. Stabilizer fins, flat-ended, that looked very much like a rocket ships' fins sat rigid above, below, and to either side of the trunks door, also bluish. Strangely enough, the top fin had a metal tail also coated by metal rings curled up under its ignition-pipe-the flattened part. At the end of this tail was a spike ball, like an ankylosaurus' tail, that had a laser at one point instead of a spike. But maybe the things Pleecy found the most-…odd-were the four massive reddish-black spider legs holding the ship just inches above the ground, with joints similar to the joints a canine or other Earth animal would have. They were crouched in animal-characteristic Z's in front of and behind the ship in a very spider-like position. But they had a big difference from PAK spider legs besides being twice as thick and _much _longer-the claws that served as the bottom segment of the legs were _huge, like chop-a-car-in-half huge. _And cylindrical, too.

Pleecy whistled as she ran her hand along its smooth body, well, where she could touch it around the spider leg segments and spikes, anyway, as she walked around the right side of the ship. Ley was rummaging through drawers on the left wall.

"Well, _well,_ Ley. A _Static Tiger?_…_Impressive._ I didn't think they made _Spork Model Static Tigers_ anymore. Oh, but no, no!: this one's different…" she paused. "You've upgraded it a bit since I last saw it, huh?" Pleecy chuckled, impressed. Well, as impressed as an Irken could be, _especially_ of her caliber!

"Mm-hmm…" Ley mumbled, head half buried in a drawer. "Have to. How else am I supposed to keep up with the ever-expanding area of study we call mechanics?" she finally found her keys in the _up-teenth _drawer she had checked, _waaay_ down near the garage door. "We better leave soon. If we don't we might not catch the wormhole in time," Ley said as she made her way over to the cockpit. She stopped in front of it, pressed a button on the keys, and stepped aside as the diamond-shaped cockpit windshield lifted up, opening to expose the inside. She stepped aside. "Passengers first," she said to Pleecy, smiling.

"So what're we doin' now?" Pleecy said as she stepped into the cockpit and made her way to the body of the ship. She was cautious as she stepped over the metal rings of the neck: it felt like a bridge in a jungle when she walked over it. The row of seats consisted of two full-sized seatbelts with diagonal seatbelts sandwiching a smaller seat with a horizontal seatbelt. She sat in the rightmost seat next to the window so she could see the cockpit better. She buckled as Ley lowered herself into the bowl-shaped cockpit.

"Well, the best thing for us to do would be to stop at your house, grab what we need, and stop by my house again on our way out."

"Mk. Sounds like a plan to me."

"Kay then. Hang on!" Ley said as the ship shook, starting up. Ley grabbed the double-joystick controls. The ship began to back up, still shuddering, as the garage automatically opened itself. Pleecy gawked out the window of the trunks' door as Ley backed up toward the opening in the wall.

"Whoahwhoahwhoahwhoahwhoah!" Pleecy cried. "You're not flying this thing to my house in _broad-frickin'-daylight _are you?" The ship backed out the door, tilted upward, and shot up into the sky. _"IIIRRRKKK FFFFRRRRIIICCCCCKKKKKIIITTTTT LLLLEEEEYYYYY_!" Pleecy screeched as she dug her claw-like hands into the upholstery.

"Relax, Pleecy. The cloaker's on," Ley chirped over her shoulder.

"Huh?" Pleecy said in a Zim-like manner. "She looked out the window: No one, _not a soul, noticed! _

_Gawd…_

"Y'know ya coulda told me you had a dm cloaker installed on this thing!" Pleecy cussed, her antennas twitching under her disguise and her mark glittering from a mix of anger and stress. She sighed, calming herself down as the ship cruised coolly to her base as if nothing was a-matter. She glared out the window at the horrid Earth city.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

It didn't take long for Pleecy to load up what she needed to pack, even though there was _a lot,_ since Neeka had detected Leys' ship coming to the base and began taking what they'd need out to the back yard. Before leaving, Pleecy gave Gaz a special watch-similar to the watches people would use to communicate sometimes, but much better. She had showed Gaz a specific button on the side.

"If we're not back within a week and a half, give this to your dad and tell him to press _this_ button, _in private,"_she had said before Ley called her to get back in the ship so they could continue on to her house.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

At Leys' house, they did almost the same: loading a few boxes of supplies into the crowded trunks.

Everyone had thought the same thing-_Thank Irk it was so big. _

Ley had also grabbed her most prized possession: An upside-down-cone shaped medicine box which always seemed to Pleecy to be infinite, or at least _waaaaaay_ bigger than it appeared. Ley was always pulling so many herbs and stuff out of it! It couldn't all possibly fit in that puny, hand-sized cone! Oh, whatever, it wasn't important to Pleecy how big Leys' Medicine Box was, what was important to Pleecy was getting off that Irk-forsaken ball of dirt before its moon drives her up a wall and out the roof! She _couldn't have been happier_ when Ley jumped in the cockpit, proclaiming "Everybody buckle up before your eyeballs get sucked into your skull, 'cause we're off!"

**Author's Note-Luxray, btw, is a Pokemon, in case that confuzzled you. I couldn't wait until I made another video to post this chapter, so if you didn't understand the description, refer to the video when i post another drawing video please :) Anyway, Thanks for Reading! ^FT^**


	10. A Rabbit Hole in Reality

Pleecy looked up from her conversions, stared out over what she presumed was what hyuumans called "countryside": it was quite pretty. Sure, it had a brown hue, but it wasn't as bad a hue as the city had. Gently sloping hills, populated with fields, and not nearly as many houses as the city had! There was even the occasional, crystal clear, glass-still pond. How pretty, how peaceful…Pleecy contemplated moving her base here, putting her greenhouse aboveground instead of below so it could get natural sunlight. With how close the planet was to its sun and the other stars, why, everything would grow much better! Less smog, too, more oxygen, more rainfall—

Pleecy's mind suddenly snapped back to her scrap paper. That's it! Her PAK had finished doing a calculation Pleecy figured she wouldn't have time to do. She was calculating how fast they would have to move once they got into space-_no, they hadn't gotten off the planet yet._ Ley was circling the planet, chasing the sunrise, flying with the planet's turning so it would give them speed-slingshot them into space—and so the atmospheric entry would be easier on the ship. Which, she insisted, hadn't flown for ages, but Pleecy wasn't so sure about _that _claim…

Ley also secretly wanted to show Pleecy around the planet. **(:P) **Ley wanted to take a look the rapidly-disappearing beauty left on Earth, too. How sad. Such a lovely planet, destroyed by its own creations…maybe Irkens had something in common with Humans after all…

Pleecy had changed the setup of the back seats. Now they were along the walls of Ley's ship, elongated in length and width like some frickin' Hollywood sofa. The interior in back was surprisingly roomy when one moved the side seats, well, aside, and had the middle seat move up against the luggage to hold it in back.

She was sitting sideways on the now couch-like right-side seat so her feet were propped up and she was slouching slightly with her back to the cockpit. A levitating tray sat—or rather floated— at the seat's side. She jotted down a few variables on her white scratch paper. X=87, Y=Pi—ah, Frick, Pi. You curse-ed number—s=Lower Nova-_Great. _Lower Nova was an Irken scientist term for somewhere below the speed of light. Oh, wait! She had to divide s by y, times x—

She was jolted from her PAK's calculations by the ship lurching, and then shuddering. Neeka, who was in sleep mode across from her master, suddenly woke up, red-eyed and ready to shoot the next thing that moved.

"_Ley!_ -the Frick is the ship shaking _apart?"_ Pleecy called, steadying herself on the seat.

"It's not, Pleecy! We're about to enter the Ozone Layer. The Jetstream's shuddering is a warning sign to strap in!" Ley called back over the clatter of metal and the rush of air.

Pleecy re-buckled herself as Neeka zoomed to her side in a blur of gray and red, saluted, and curled up in a disguised cat-nap posture on her master's lap, fusing her tail and front paws to the ship. Water started to spray over the sides of the ship. "What's with the water, Ley?" Pleecy yelled over the noise.

"Keeps the ship from overheating, and the steam helps with exit and entry," Ley called back as tongues of flame leapt and swarmed over the ship's exterior, followed by streams of steam. "The steam makes a sort of 'bubble'. Lessens the friction," she stated.

After a few moments, the ship gave a final sudden lurch. The ship's quivering stopped as the black matter of space Pleecy was so used to faded in swiftly around them, replacing the sickly-blue-brown polluted sky of Earth. Pleecy sighed at the homey sight of constellations up close-well, as close as one can get to one, anyway.

"Where'd you say the wormhole was going to open up at again?" Ley said, breaking the silence and making Pleecy jump.

"Oh, uhm, near Jupiter, I believe," Pleecy said, alert. Her PAK did a quick search. 'Yup, just ahead. Keep goin' straight," she said rather cheerfully. "Switch the Stabilizer on when we pass Mars."

"Eh-ha! Well, I'm not sure how straight we can stay in space, but Jupiter I can get to easy," Ley replied as she pulled the ship's nose up slightly.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Gaz walked in to her house, surprised to hear her dad greet from the kitchen, "Hello, kids! How was your sleep over?"

"We weren't at a sleep over," Gaz stated flatly, marching to her room to grab more batteries and stuff she figured she'd need while Dib-sitting.

Professor Membrane thought a moment, pausing from his newest toast experiment. "…Oh, yes! Dib is sick. Well, did you bring your brother home?"

"No."

"Huh? He's not _actually _that sick is he?"

"Yes. I have to go watch him while Pleecy does some work."

"Mwuhahahaha!" Membrane cackled. "A junior scientist, trying to cure _my_ son! You _are_ my funny chil-"

"It's_ her_ chemicals making him sick, Dad. I think she can handle it," Gaz said with a touch of sarcasm. Gaz strolled up the steps to her room, leaving her ignorant 'father' in her silent wake of terror. **(XD)**

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy strained to see out the cockpit window, but she had to keep herself steady in the ship's neck, which was hard to do when the floor's made of metal plates and you're straining to pick up the energy signature of something that shouldn't even exist and makes no sense to anyone's science. They were almost to Jupiter, just outside its gravitational field. They had been waiting a while for the Galactic Wormhole to open. Ley was making a few final preparations, so as to make a safe wormhole-jump.

"Well, everything's ready. Sense anything yet, Pleecy?" Ley asked over her shoulder.

Pleecy closed her eyes, focused. Waited.

There! A sudden burst of energy popped up on her mental radar, but disappeared as fast as it had come up. A sure sign of reality being warped. Pleecy's eyes squeezed together from strain: All the moons around Jupiter messed with her thought-meats. "…Faint, but that was definitely It. Just wait for it, Ley, here it comes…"

Sometime in the next instant, though Pleecy and Ley weren't exactly sure _when_, a twinkle caught their eyes up ahead, in between the nice view of Jupiter and them. Time seemed to stretch and warp or slow down. Odd, but only to be expected when the wormhole was forcing itself open. Of course time was being tweaked: space was being massively tweaked, so time, as part of the time-space continuum, had to be tweaked in turn. It felt like a slow-motion movie scene to Pleecy, but then again, the wormhole seemed to just be…_there. _No explosion. No insanity. _Nothing. _But wait, she couldn't tell whether she remembered instant beauty or not, but _Neeka_ could make sense of it all. She watched in awe as a rainbow in the shape of a tunnel seemed to yawn open, take the appearance of a human eye instantly, and morph into a tunnel shape again. The color was amazing! All neon, all new, all a tiny flick of spectacle displaying the space between dimensions-or rather, what it looked like between dimensions, if there even was any appearance…huh. Blues, greens, pinks, yellows, some even Neeka couldn't identify! Ley and Pleecy were in awe, _complete awe_, like deer in headlights. That was the problem with any type of Wormhole: they were hypnotic, insane, but sane at the same time. They might as well be Moon-Blinking* their victims, those who traveled through space and wound up running into-literally or figuratively- wormholes they didn't expect to open. Therefore, Neeka had to activate the Stabilizer's effects herself. The two front mechanical spider legs pointed themselves toward the wormhole and shot a braiding, twisting beam into its center, into its event horizon. It looked like Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon*. Neeka directed the ship into the now-stable quirk of science.

A shock ran through both Pleecy and Ley, a PAK's wake-up call. Both doubled over, panting.

"Well, that was…interesting," Ley said meekly between pants.

"No matter how many times I do that, it never gets easier," Pleecy griped, and threw back her head in laughter.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

**Author's Note-eh? Not bad for a winged chapter, huh? XD You can really tell I like science in this chapter ^FT^ Anyway, Moon blinking is a term from The Guardians of Ga'Hoole book series. Some bad owls took owlets and made them sleep at night under the moon, and they had to 'sleep march' every once in a while. Screwed up their heads. Even worse, they had to say their names over and over when they walked. Compared to the book, the movie was terribly inaccurate .. Piccolo is from Dragon Ball Z. Anyone notice the "I Feel Sick" by JV line? Thanks for Reading! ^FT^**


	11. Captured

Neeka stared out the window, analyzing the energy and other traits of the wormhole: Pleecy wanted to see if she could make a more effective Stabilizer, and she also figured Neeka would detect the end of the wormhole before the ship could, if it could even detect such things! The rainbow colors raced by, over the ship, over Neeka, over her master, over the human, over everything-like the way the lights in a tunnel bathe everything passing through, except with an endless rainbow instead of lights.

Pleecy sat on the still-moved seat, totally enveloped in a novel. _And an Earth novel at that!_ _War of the Worlds__…_go figure.

Ley interjected into her reading, "Pleecy, how much farther on does this thing go?"

Pleecy, annoyed from the interruption, looked over her book like a mad librarian. An antenna twitched. She was scowling. "I. Don't. Know. Like I said before, I haven't traveled in wormholes for decades. I'd have to focus to check. It'll take an Earth day, anyway! What time is i—oh, right. _Wormhole."_

"Yes, well, if I had to guess, on Earth It'd probably be around supper. Neeka, do you know what time it is?"

"Sorry, Ma'am, but my internal clock stopped as soon as we crossed the event horizon."

Ley sighed. "Guess we'll have to go by estimates, then—"

Something in Neeka's head beeped. "Continuum Fluctuation ahead! Continuum Fluctuation ahead, Ma'am!"

Pleecy looked up, "Eh? Oh, _Thank Irk. _Neeka, ready the Stabilizer. Buckle up, Ley. Exits are _headaches…"_

As Pleecy spoke, the ship began to rattle again. Ley and Pleecy strapped in just in time, but the next thing they knew the 'space' around the wormhole began to warp itself, and the duo received splitting headaches. Neeka, seeing her master in distress, took the controls as the rainbow walls melted away-literally-into blackness. Little lights began to flicker on in the dead-blackness, which Neeka identified as stars in the distance. Before they knew it, they were in their own reality again.

Pleecy flopped back on the leather seat, a spider leg extending out and placing an icepack between her antennas. Her mark subconsciously flickered with sparks. Ley looked out the cockpit windshield, "Phew. _Good Lord_, what was _that_?"

"That's the problem with wormholes: if you can sense energy, you get a _Frickin' _headache upon exiting…" her antenna twitched again. "Neeka, how far are we from the bazaar?"

Neeka peeked out over the dashboard. "Just above it. But, uhm, there's a problem."

"Good _Irk,_ a _problem?_ We just survived a wormhole-jump, and _now _you talk to me about _problems?"_ Pleecy complained the last part to herself. "What the Frick _now?_"

"The Resistance," Neeka said as she identified the ship's power signature in front of theirs.

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"We have a problem, Sir," Shloonktapooxis cooed from Lard Nar's side.

"A _prob_-lem? What _now?_" Lard Nar complained. "We just get a new ship, and already there's a problem? Ugh…" he hung his head. The Resisty had just gotten a new command ship a few weeks ago. It looked similar to their old one, but was sleeker, more powerful, and had a dungeon Lard Nar figured he wouldn't need. Then again, when did things _ever _go his way?

"Weeeelll, it's not really a big problem, I think…?"

"What is it?" Lard Nar said exasperatedly.

"There's an Irken ship out there!" Shloonktapooxis cheered, lifting up a little higher in the air, sticking out his tongue.

Lard Nar's eyes widened. His head shot up. "What?"

"He's right, Sir. A ship with an Irken power signature just pulled out of a wormhole ahead of us," Ixane said in her wispy voice through her cloak. Lard Nar looked up, out the windshield. At least Ixane wasn't so useless…

Lard Nar could see an older Irken ship in front of his own: odd, he thought the Irkens stopped using _Static Tigers_ a while ago. No matter. It wouldn't stand a chance against his new ship, anyway! Stupid Irken scum!

It was then he started to internally panic. Had the Irkens finally noticed the Black Market Bazaars? If so, then they'd be screwed! Where else could they get supplies? Certainly nowhere else! "Activate the Tractor Beam! Bring it into the docking bay!" ideas were swimming through his head: he may be able to blackmail the empire with whoever's inside, or make an example out of them! Even _better_, he could get information out of them, perhaps!

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy activated her disguise. "So, you're _sure _they won't bother us?" she asked Ley.

"Positive. The Pacifists and Resisty made a treaty ages ago. They wouldn't dare hurt us, I think. You _are_ registered as an _Invader_, anyway, so…"

"_Great. Very _reassuring, Ley," Pleecy griped as a message from the ship ahead blinked on the cockpit screen. Ley looked down at the little screen. "What _now?_"

"Shush, Pleecy. We'll be fine."

A voice emanated from the cockpit screen, where a picture of an open letter blinked. "Irken scum! Prepare to be boarded!" it said. There was a sound like an announcer being clicked off.

Pleecy turned her head slowly and glared at the human. "Wouldn't hurt us, _eh?_" she said with narrowed eyes.

The ship bounced momentarily, knocking Pleecy to the metal plated floor as it was pulled toward the Resisty's new ship. "Irk dmit!" she cussed, and picked her sore self up.

"Master, are you ok?" Neeka said, helping Pleecy up.

"Yes, I'm fine Neeka. Thank you, but we have bigger problems," she said as they watched the other ship close in. Pleecy patted Neeka's head absently.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy and Ley were cuffed and directed up to the bridge of the ship. Neeka hid herself among the luggage, curling up so as to seem like some random piece of equipment amongst the supplies. _Thank Irk_ no one bothered to loot the trunk.

Oftentimes, Pleecy would stop in the middle of the hallway, just to be bumped into by Spleenk, the alien with all the bad ideas, who had been assigned as her guard while some other alien walked behind Ley. She did this on purpose, of course, smirking all the while: who said getting captured was supposed to be torturous?

Pleecy did it again. "Hey! Watch it, get moving!" Spleenk poked her in the PAK with a taser stick, which was awfully painful. Ley looked at Pleecy as she doubled over, sparks flying from her PAK. Pleecy kept herself from crying out in pain, which was part of her Invader Training:_ never give them the pleasure of knowing they hurt you_, which applied to many factors of life, Pleecy knew. The two caught each other's eye, and Pleecy restrained herself from killing this guy. _This_ guy, but possibly not the _rest_. Pleecy looked at Spleenk with a glittering glare, making him freeze up and stop in the hallway as the others moved on. She shot her tongue in his direction.

The trio at last walked through an auto-door behind Lard Nar's command chair. Lard Nar turned his chair around to look at the girls. "Well, what is _this_? What the Vort are _you two_ supposed to be?"

Pleecy glared at him as a spark ran across her eyes, like Tak would do. Ley answered instead, just to be safe. "_Humans_, Lard Nar_. I'm_ also a pacifist," Ley said with a smile.

"Ha! A pacifist, flying around a black market! With an Irken ship no doubt! How _stupid_ do you think I am?"

"Dumb as a gasquigasplorch," Pleecy answered matter-of-factly. Ley elbowed her. Pleecy winced, still sore from the taser.

"Heh, I thought as much. You Irkens are all the same. Put them in the dungeon!" Lard Nar told the alien guard. "Never thought I'd say that," he added silently, turning away towards the windshield. "How's about we give the Massive a call, eh?" This suggestion was met by a few cheers.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

"Get your claws off me, you smell like hyuuman! Ah!" Pleecy roared as she was forced into a concrete cell, except instead of a door it had lasers in place of bars. Ley was forced a few cells down, so as not to have them scheme up an escape attempt. She sat up in the left corner of her cell, keeping herself from charging straight through the laser bars and mentally attacking the guard who pushed her in.

Ley, on the other hand, didn't quarrel as much when they forced her away from her friend. She just stood her ground in front of the cell instead of going into it until something knocked her in with a blow to her back. She checked over her back afterwards. "Phew," she sighed as she slouched against the wall.

**Author's Note-I hope I didn't make the Resisty seem to cruel or smart XD Anyway, Thanks for Reading! ^FT^ I'll be busy this week so I may not post for a while…again. -_-' Oh well. Btw, I got the Resisty names from Zim Wiki.**


	12. What Was That Emotion?

"Incoming Transmis-_sion! _From the," the pilot muffled a chuckle, "the _Resisty." _

Purple doubled over, choking on Irken doughnuts. Red smacked him hard on the back, but instead of hitting Purple's back, he whacked his PAK. Half a doughnut shot like a cannon from Purple's throat, smacking a pilot in front of him upside the head like a wet noodle. "Ach! W-what? Ahaha! The _Resisty!_ _Ah_," Purple wiped a tear from his eye, "That's a good one. No seriously, who is it?"

"T-the Resisty, My Tallest," the pilot said, stifling a laugh from watching the pilot across the Cockpit fling the doughnut piece on the Massive's metallic floor.

Red, acting like nothing happened to Purple but laughing his PAK off on the inside, waved his hand nonchalantly toward the pilot. "Oh, very well," he said in an exasperated tone, "Put it through."

Lard Nar, not trying to act tough this time, appeared on the Massive's, well, _massive_ screen. "Greetings, Irken _ssscumbags_," he chirped, smirking evilly. "I believe we have something of importance that belongs to you…?"

"What could _you_ have that _we_ _care_ about?" Red spat as a video feed of two prison cells appeared on the screen. The two feeds showed ceiling-views of two human females, both slouching against a wall. The Tallests' eyes widened and they looked at each other when Lard Nar expanded one of the video-feeds so it took up half the screen. A brunette human female with hair like Gaz's except long in back sat in the right upper corner of her cell. Purple looked at Red and shook his head. _Don't say anything, ignore it, act like you don't know her…_

Red was internally freaking out. Then he remembered - this is _Pleecy _they have in a cell. Sooner or later she'll bust herself out, no need to panic. How'd _they_ catch _her_ anyway? This was their precious Mystic serv – uh, pardon, _Invader_ – they had locked up. Ah well, she drive them all to insanity soon anyway.

Purple saw the conflict and confusion spreading on his co-ruler's face, and he also knew Lard Nar could see it, so before Lard Nar could try and strike a bargain, Purple said, "Who the Irk's _that?"_

"What are you talking abo-" Red started. Purple shot him a look. "Ooh…yea? What do you take us for, _idiots?_ How could anything _tall_ be an _idiot_? Why are we even _talking_ to you? You're so…_short." _He said the last word like it hurt, fake-wincing for effect. "_And _you're a Vortian. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, _working?"_

Purple fake-grimaced. "You _are_ short, and you're the 'Resisty' leader, right? Ha! Cut the transmission!" Purple called over his shoulder to a random pilot.

"No, wait! What about _this_ one? _Heh?"_ Lard Nar said as he expanded the other video-feed.

Red squinted at the screen. "…You _sssssssicken_ me. I've never seen that…_thing…_in my life."

"Yea, what _are_ those, anyway? They're short, like you. And _Ugly, _like you_. _Why would _we _want _those?"_ Purple sneered. He made a shooing motion towards a pilot, who cut the transmission.

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Lard Nar swiveled away from the screen. He looked at two monitors floating behind him, showing the video-feeds. "Why didn't they _beg_ for them back? They're obviously Irkens, why don't they want them back? Grrr….Gah! You!"- he pointed to a random Resisty member-"Go dismantle whatever disguises they're using! Now!"

"Why _me_?"

"It was your idea!"

"No it-"

"Now!"….

…..Minutes later, the member came back with a bloody hand, bandaging it as he walked.

"Well?" Lard Nar pressed, impatient and aggravated by the Tallets' scoffs.

"I didn't find one on one, but the other bit my hand. It hurt," the member complained. "I remember waking up on the floor."

"The _floor? _What were you doing _on the floor?"__** (dancing XD)**_

"I don't know! Her eyes were all sparkly, and I woke up on the floor." He shrugged.

Lard Nar put his hand to his jaw, thinking. He jumped down from his command chair onto the platform by the door, said, "I want to be alone, I have thinking to do! No one bother me" heroically, and with that, left for his quarters.

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Pleecy spat a bloody *lugee from her mouth; not _her_ blood, though, some random idiot's who tried to pat her down for her disguise. Seeing perfect timing for a gag of annoyance, she had screamed out "_RRRAAAAPPPPE!"_ just for kicks and chomped down on his hand, remembering what blood tasted like. She scolded herself mentally for thinking like that again. _*That's not you anymore. That's how the _old_ you thought, not you now. Snap out of it!* _That was the last thing she needed to have happened after she sensed she was being looked down upon in more ways than one and had to subconsciously make sure Red kept his pie hole shut. **(Pun ^FT^)**

She slouched back in the corner again. After some time, she felt a nagging energy in the back of her mind: Someone who knew a bit of telepathy was trying to contact her.

_Pleecy?_

_..…Hello, am I getting through, Pleecy?_

_Yea, yea, yea, red ya loud n' clear, Ley. _What?

_Are you able to get yourself out? I-I think a muscle in my back is pulled. And why did I hear someone run screaming?_

_Probably yea, that sucks, and no reason. _

_Uhm, ok…? Well, we're going to have to get out of here soon if we're going to keep our schedule. _

Pleecy got an idea, and Ley picked up on it. She facepalmed in her cell. _Give me a minute, _Pleecy thought with an evil smirk.

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Lard Nar stood in front of his door with the security pass in hand. It opened, revealing a largely spaced room that looked a lot like the cockpit mixed with a techy bedroom. He was wiped, and also had to think about the incident in the dungeon. No, not the biting, at least he hoped: he was pretty sure Irkens didn't carry rabies but wouldn't be surprised if they did, anyway.

No, he had to think about what the member said about sparkly eyes. _Sparkly Eyes…_ why did he find that disturbing? He walked over to his bed; a king-sized, metal framed thing from Vort, home of the universe's most comfortable couch and _also_ the most _absolutely_ comfortable beds! He flopped down and sank a few inches, since the bed was similar to a Tempur-Pedic.

_Sparkly eyes…._

Why did that unsettle him so much?

Hmm...

Sparkly eyes…

"My Vort…" he suddenly said. Sparkly Eyes. No life forms naturally had those, did they? _*No, they don't. The one said she was a pacifist; could the other be one, too? A pacifist wouldn't bite! They're peaceful, why would one bite? _Unless…*He gasped and jerked up. "Of course! The little parasite's a Mystic, I'm sure of it!" It was then he heard something in the back of his mind.

_Good Lord_, finally_! I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out. _The voice was feminine, and proceeded to laugh in the characteristically maniacal manner of Irkens Lard Nar knew all too well.

"What? Who's there?" He looked around wildly, just a few seconds ago certain he was alone.

_You just said so yourself. Or rather, _thought_ so yourself._ He heard it snicker lightly.

Nar gasped. "You! I knew there was something off about you! Who are you? Come out now!"

_Well, okay, I guess. __**(0.0) **__But you asked for it. _

Lard Nar blinked, and suddenly he was standing, surrounded by black…nothingness. There was nothing around him; he was out of his room. Nay, his ship! He cringed, waiting to implode in the vacuum.

….Nothing happened.

He waited….

_You're not in space, idiot. It's an illusion, a special, very good one at that,_ the female voice sneered at him with a self-flattering tone.

_Pardon? What'd you- where are we?_

_I just said it's an illusion. God._

Lard Nar rolled his eyes, and then he remembered something the pacifists always told people about Mystics of any race. _Can I at least _see _who the Vort it is messing with my head? _He said, letting the Mystic know he recognized his predicament: respect – a Mystic's weak spot.

_Ehehe, oh, very well. Since you're polite, at least. _A bluish blur faded into being just a few feet in front of him, like a genie. Soon enough, it took a shape similar to an Irken, just as Lard Nar thought. He gaped at the figure when it solidified. _ 'Sup, Nar? From your expression, I'm assuming you recognize me. But just in case, my name is Pleecy. _

_Oh yes, I've heard of you, Irken demon, _Nar spat with a scowl and a venomous tone.

_Oh, do quit with the name calling for a moment, this is important. I could have just mentally tormented you, y'know? But I haven't! _Pleecy added quieter -_- sound so much like Dib - _with a secretive reminiscent smile.

_Comforting, very comforting. _Nar said sarcastically. _What do you want? _

_Yes, well, I really, really, _really_ need you to let my friend and I go. _

With a contemptuous scowl and air, Lard Nar countered, _And why should I do that?_

The anger in his eyes, in his face, in his voice, saddened Pleecy a bit. Why did everyone have to hate her, look at her with a detesting fire behind their eyes her abilities made her actually feel, like she was some rabid animal? Oh, right – she's Irken, _that's_ why. _B-because, _she stammered. Why was she stammering? Being hated shouldn't bother her! Being hated shouldn't _bother Irkens!_ She hoped the steam coming from below her one eye was from sheer spite, but she knew it wasn't – so did Lard Nar. _Because someone could die if you don't. _

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Lard Nar was stunned. Speechless_. _That couldn't be a tear, could it have? Everyone knew Irkens were bred with no tear ducts. Apparently even demons had feelings, even if their tears were bloody*. He finally mustered himself up to answer, if not rather shakily as well. _W-what are you talking about? Who could die? _What? He wasn't some lowlife! Why would he be the Resisty leader if he was some cold-hearted lowlife?

The Irken seemed to harden, expression and all, and she explained the one called 'Dib' 's predicament: the time limit, the wormhole effects, the possibility of visiting Venat, etc. Nar was stunned. _An actual __Irken Invader__ was showing concern, sadness, worry, __actual emotions,__ and not just for its own race!_ He was momentarily convinced that this was a disguised pacifist staring him straight in the face, but then he double-taked at her uniform – yup, definitely an Invader.

Around the end of the story, Lard Nar felt like an earthquake was racking him. "Lard Nar! Wake up! Lard Nar! Sir!" he heard a wispy voice say.

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"Lard Nar! Wake up! Lard Nar! Sir!" Ixane said, shaking Lard Nar by the shoulders. Most of the Resisty had come running to their leader's quarters the moment Shloonktapooxis had squealed out something about Lard Nar being unconscious and nearly unresponsive, occasionally mumbling something about a 'freak of nature.'

Shloonktapooxis moved higher in the air, "Whoo! I think I saw him twitch!" Lard Nar was lying face-up on his bed, not having moved until everyone crowded into his room and Ixane started trying to wake him up.

He suddenly shot up from the bed, Ixane still holding his shoulders. "Gah! What, huh? W-what happened?"

**Author's Note- thanks for Reading! ^FT^ It was actually kind of odd writing this chapter, you can imagine why. Thanks to ****TearsxOfxBlood for the Demon-bloody-tears-analogy inspiration! :D I wasn't sure if I spelled lugee right, but you know what I meant, right? This chapter didn't quite come out like I planned, but I wasn't in an evil mood I guess XD**


	13. The Bazaar

**Author's Note- Head's Up! May want to refer to my 1st design vid during this chapter.**

Pleecy rearranged the trunk contents, not wanting anything to be broken or to have shifted around to badly: just watch, they'll have a rough landing, and a laser will go the Irk off or something! With her luck—

She was startled out of her thoughts when she sensed an uneasy Lard Nar walk up behind her. She turned her head just enough so that she could see him in the corner of her eye. He had his hands behind his back, and looked a bit uncomfortable.

Ley looked up from her ship's controls to turn around in the cockpit, glancing toward the edgy duo behind the ship. Neeka's head popped up from somewhere in the trunk.

Lard Nar outstretched a hand; how he could be doing this, he'll never know. "G-g," he stammered slightly. He sighed. "…good luck," he said, straightening his posture.

Pleecy smiled meekly and tilted her head. "Thanks, Nar." They shook, respectfully, but also rather awkwardly. Pleecy turned back around, but added over her shoulder, "Guess you're not that bad. Y'know, for a rebel." She chuckled, a cheery spark in her eyes. Lard Nar tried not to flinch instinctively.

Ley looked on approvingly. "Come on, Pleecy. The ship's all ready."

Pleecy glanced up, "Great." She walked around the front and strapped into her seat, Neeka curling up next to her. "Ya, I missed you too, ya fur ball." Neeka meowed jokingly and looked up at her master.

"Take care, Nar. Don't be such a stranger around the monasteries," Ley added.

Nar waved casually. "Will do."

Nar and the rest of his crew watched the old ship take off from the docking bay waving. "Guess you're not so bad yourself_, _Demon," he murmured to himself, and chuckled good-naturedly as well.

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"O-k then," Pleecy moaned, stretching as the ship hovered over the planet. "What next? Oh yeah, black market. _By the way_," she added quizzically, "anyone know the Earth-date?"

Neeka looked up from her Rubics Pyramid. "We've been gone for about four Earth days, Sir." Her eyes flipped to red and back to blue when she spoke.

"Four?" Ley piped. "How could it be four days already?"

"Wormhole junk again," Pleecy said nonchalant. "When you move through space, you also gotta move through time. _Time__-Space Continuum. _Basic physics laws for anywhere."

"Oh, right. That's just great."

"_Whelp_," Pleecy sighed, "we should 'prolly be gettin' down there before suspicions arise from an Irken ship hovering overhead."

"That's suspicious to the black market, too?"

"Well, when you're sellin' illegal crap to illegal people, you're always on edge and have two things: 1.) a hidden blade or other weapon, and 2.) a back exit, even if you have to make it yourself."

"I don't want to know how you know that." Ley's eyes widened slightly, but not very much: this was Pleecy they were talking about. It wasn't very shocking her friend knew how to act at an illegal bazaar.

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An odd ship parked on the dusty, rocky flatlands surrounding the outpost. Two weird, pale, hairy beings jumped out of its cockpit. Of course, everyone was so blind they didn't notice the Irken insignia plain as day on one of their shirts.

"What're we looking for again?" the one with black, blue, and terra-cotta hair asked the brunette one.

"_Griffifh Claw Diamonds, _preferably in dust-form, plus a few other things. Just follow my lead, tell no one your name, stick close, talk to no one." It sounded like the brunette was prepping the black haired one for jail or a fugitive life or something…

The bazaar looked like a poor town: rows and rows of tents and stands as far as the eye could see, like a picnic or festival, all with merchandise all along the normality spectrum, and different colored. The bazaar sat in the middle of some random rocky desert-looking landscape showing no signs of life on some random backwater planet that was _purposely_ unmarked and unnamed. Everyone probably had shady backgrounds, Ley presumed, including her friend.

After some time, they came across a stand that appeared to be made of wood, or was it petrified wood? Ley was unsure. There was a man behind the counter pouring different things, not just water, into different pots and holders with curious plants Ley immediately recognized as being dangerous, illegal, or rare. _Or all of the above._ Pleecy slouched on the counter, crossing her arms on it and leaning over them. She whistled with two fingers in her mouth.

"Give me a sec, hold your screwheads," the odd alien said in a gruff veteran-sounding voice.

"Quid usque, Dimidium?" Pleecy said.

The man turned around. Ley knew at first glance he was a half-blood: a being that is half of one species, half of another. This one appeared to be half Irken, half Vortian, and about equal in aging to a 20-something-year old human, perhaps. Grayish-green skin, just a bit taller than Pleecy. Odd, curly, thick antennas dangled forward, being the same shape as Vortian horns, but larger and forward facing. Large, ruby eyes looked at them from behind very thin, black sunglasses. A PAK poked out from his back. "Bene, bene. Est quod Pleecy?" he said, moving his sunglasses down slightly.

"The one and only," she said, self-inflatingly.

"You self-centered smart alec," he mumbled. "Where 'you been hiding? I almost thought you crawled under a rock and de-PAKed yourself, ya maniac."

"Thank you," Pleecy joked, smirking. "I should say the same for you, Dimidium. Does the phrase, 'keep the Irk in touch' not _ring a bell?"_

"What can I say? I'm busy."

'Ah, screw busy, ya _duplex_ _genus._ Now then, I have a few, ah, 'things' I know you have. _Cough 'em up."_

"Why, of course,' he said with bits of sarcasm. "What do you need so badly that you resort to asking me for it?"

Pleecy, curled her hand up, flicked her wrist, and a short piece of paper unraveled from it. The guy apparently named Dimidium lifted the end of the paper with his finger tip, scrutinizing it. Ley figured _Dimidium_ was an appropriate and most likely typical name for a half-blood.

"Ah. Heh, ya; I got a few of these. What'chya need all these for, anyway? Between the two of you, I'd assume you got all these yourself." He looked up at Pleecy.

She snickered. "Well, ya know what they say about assumptions." Pleecy glanced around like an animal waiting for its food to be snatched out from under it. "Well, uhm," she leaned across the counter. Ley thought she caught a few words, but could tell Pleecy was most likely faking and instead using telepathy, what with all the ears around. Had it not been for their appearance, they most certainly would have been jumped or haggled or tricked or something by now. Thank God Earth was also a backwater planet.

"Huh, _well," _Dimidium mumbled as Pleecy regained her former position. "You don't say? Bene, _quod_ mutat _omnia."_

Pleecy nodded. "Unde, oportet quod habes?"

"Donec sed non omnia. Ego scire _stat_ illos, licet. Iustus esse ne ad pendent circa _hic__diu_cum omnes hoc, aliquis adepto ideas..."

"Purus," she said, nodding. Ley was somewhat sure of what they were saying, but she was a bit rusty on her Earth-Latin. She was still able to distinguish from what she could catch that Dimidium what advising them to get what they need and leave quickly.

Dimidium turned around and rummaged through his stand a while. Soon, he had a cloth bag the size of a PAK in his hand, tied with an odd-looking cord. "Here ya go. Even tied with Snake Cord."

Pleecy grasped the bag, Dimidium not letting go until she had it firmly. Just before she grabbed it though, she had flicked a few monies into the air. It dropped to the table, spun on its side, and flopped down, showing a tiny image of Tallest Red.

"Oh, no no, Pleecy. This one's on the house. Y'know, for ya troubles." He winked, then also looked around wildly. He leaned in and whispered, 'You still have my number, right?"

"Ah, calm down, Dimidium. I do, but we won't need it. We'll be fine. Worry 'bout y'own hide." Ley could see where Pleecy got some of her language from. Pleecy turned, saying, "Ah-rite. Let's go, Ley," casually. Ley turned to follow.

"Adios, pacifist," Dimidium touched two fingers to his left temple and moved them away from his head in a modest salute, pacifist-style. Ley looked over her shoulder, smiled, and followed Pleecy down the aisle.

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Pleecy's eye was magnified by the jar she looked through. It was a blue-green color, probably from the liquid inside, and contained….what looked to Ley to be a cross between a rabbit _and a squid_. Pleecy blinked, making a flashing effect in the glass. Ley was on the other side of the jar, which sat on the edge of a corner. "What're you doing?"

"I'm trying to see how viscous this thing is. I'm almost out of fresh fur-mollusk, and this one _looks_ quite ripe. Problem is I won't _know_ _until _I _bite_ it."

Ley rolled her eyes; just like Pleecy to get off topic in a bazaar and start looking for stuff she would take down to her 'special lab', then said item would never be seen _or even talked about_ again. Occasionally, when she took said items down to said labs, random evil cackles and smoke could be heard and smelled, along with other freak occurrences. Ley always wondered what she did down there. Witchcraft, perhaps? No, witches were primarily Earth cultures, since everything they did an _energy being_ could do _easily_ in a heartbeat. Maybe Pleecy studied Wiccanology, a word pacifists used to refer to Wiccans and such; the main choice in magic use by the convents and monasteries. _Very_ unlikely, also, but who ever knew when it came to Mystics? _Oy vae…_

"Why do I even ask?" she said to herself. "Pleecy, we're here for Dib, remember?"

"Yea, yea, yea, I know. But fur-mollusk is _soo raare!" _Pleecy complained.

Ley sighed. "Let's just hurry. How much else do you need to get?"

"For Dib, like five other things not counting the quadri." She said 'diamonds' in Latin; for security reasons, oh course…

"Yes, for Dib. Now let's move on before you buy a fur-mollusk." Ley said sarcastically, since she wasn't completely sure what a fur-mollusk _was…_

"Give me a sec; I think I saw an herb over here." She moved out from under the dark blue tent shading a menagerie of jars and containers lined up orderly on wooden tables. Out in the sunshine in front of the tent, herbs and other organic things sat on tables with wires snaking around and through and over them: obviously a security alarm system. Smart vendor, _smart._

Pleecy moved out into the sunlight and to a table a few feet from where the jar was, which had been on the far right tent table. She bent over and peered wide eyed at a tiny plant similar to a bean plant. Its puny size made its 2 or 3 leaves seem broad in comparison. It was in a palm-sized clay pot, like it was the most disrespectful thing imaginable, reminding Ley of the plant from "WALL-E". Ley moved to Pleecy's side and also peered down at the freshly-germinated plant.

"…What are we looking at?" she mumbled.

"_I'm_ checking for aphids. This is a _very _important plant!" Pleecy said cheerily. 'I don't know what _you're_ lookin' at,"**(:P)** she added jokingly.

"Surprisingly, I've never seen this species in my life."

"Well, I would hope so! It's rare, it's toxic, it's addictive for some races, and did I mention it's rare?"

"Yes, yes you did."

"Well it is. I _need_ this plant." Pleecy straightened up. "Yo! Seller dude! Over here!"

"Pleecy!"

"What? If you're not assertive, then no one will pay attention to ya, Ley. Rule 1 of the black market; screw politeness."

Ley rolled her eyes and stood up. "Thought rule one was 'follow your lead'…" she joked.

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Turns out Dib was able to eat _both_ sandwiches, though compared to Earth food, the Irken sandwich turned out to be quite flavorful! He also felt _way_ better after drinking the mineral water. With full…uhm, _digestion organ_…Dib decided that he'd go do something, probably play a game or take a walk around, after a good power nap…

…Dib woke up slowly, surprised by the purple and green blur hunched over him. He could have sworn it resembled Zim, right down to the outfit. It scared the crap out of him when his vision cleared and he saw what appeared to be a female Irken peering at him with big, deep purple eyes. "Agh! _Tak_!"

"N-no I-"

"Get away from me, you…you user! -" He couldn't think of any other word to use.

"_My Tallest_ soldier, get a grip!" Odd, it didn't have Tak's British accent…

The next thing Dib knew, two gloved hands were pressing down on the bases of his antennas. He tried to protest, but nothing came out. His voice wouldn't work! Then the hands started to move in circles, which felt like a massage to Dib. He slouched back on the stretcher…."H-hey! Cu-" he managed to squeak out. He shook the gloves off.

"Oh, sorry. Not every male likes that, I forgot." Dib finally got a good look at his visitor: a female Irken who seemed quite tall, Pleecy probably came to about where her nose would be in a size comparison. She was kneeling on the stretcher, being careful not to kneel on his legs. She had curly antennas similar to Zims', but they curled in a manner that when they were flat and poking off her head, the curls faced up and made about one rotation. Her eyes were big and deep purple, a bit like Taks' shade of purple. She had two large eyelashes per eye. Her dress was the same shade, and she, too, had the typical black gloves, boots, and tights. But what Dib found odd was that from his experience with Irkens, they didn't normally where hoods: this Irken had a striking gold hood-and-cape. The inside of the hood was dazzling silver. Apparently even Irkens thought all that glittered was valuable. The cape ended in two tail-like parts, making a V. **(Her picture is in my 1****st**** design vid, btw. Just in case.) **"Commander Diz_, Tactics Commander_ of the Tallest, at your service, wounded warrior," she said, standing up and bowing formally.

"Diz, huh?" Dib thought that sounded familiar. "…Oh, yea! Pleecy mentioned you, I think…** (o.o) **Wait, oh sorry, I'm no Irken warrior!" He shivered and made some odd disgusted noise.

"Oh really? Then why are you in the Medical Bay of Invader Pleecy? You must be delirious, soldier."

"Stop calling me that!" Dib hopped off the stretcher, too.

Diz seemed to wilt slightly. "My Irk, you're quite tall, er, uhm, dude…?" She was unsure what to call him at that point. She had to stop her antennas from wiggling respectfully; Dib was almost her height, just under her eyes.

"Huh?" He looked down at himself. "Oh, right, height based society…and I'm not crazy! Why does everyone say that?"

Diz raised a nonexistent eyebrow at him. _*An Irken who's not entirely flattered at the title of soldier, how odd…* _"Well, if you're not a soldier, or 'crazy,' _or_ wounded, then why are you in the Medical Bay?" Diz was totally puzzled.

"Well, er um," he scratched his head. Diz thought something seemed off about this Irken's posture; she was trained to examine and identify the body language of multiple races as one of those 'precautions' the Tallest always insisted on, and she noticed that the male Irken's center of gravity was all wrong. He leaned forward more than an Irken should, and he didn't seem to know very much about his _own_ race. She leaned around to look at the babbling male's PAK. Maybe something was wrong with it or—

"_Oh my Tallest!_ Y-you're PAK!" she exclaimed, pointing.

"Huh, wha..?" Dib looked himself over frantically.

"Good Irk, boy! Y-you're PAK's missing! H-how could you let that happen? Irk knows how long you ha-"

"Diz, Ma'am, calm down!" Star, Ley's white rabbit with the purple bow, silver furred stomach/ tail/eyelashes, laid down ears, and odd all-blue eyes **(Also in design vid)**, quickly hopped in front of Diz. "Diz, Ma'am! He's absolutely fine, almost…Breathe Ma'am, breathe…" She had a wispy, quiet voice.

Diz took a few deep breaths. "Star's your name, right? How is he 'almost' fine? His PAK is –"

"He never _had_ a PAK, Ma'am."

Diz looked like she would faint. 'Eh, w-wha..? H-how is that even _possible_? I mean, basic Irken physiology—"

"He's not fully Irken. Not _yet._ And he's not a half-blood, either."

Diz just stared at her, for once uncomprehending of an idea.

Star sighed, not sure how to go from here. She didn't have to think long, because on the other side of the door was heard another female. "Oh God, do I have to do everything _myself_?" the auto-door opened, and there stood…_Gaz_. "Long story short, _tootz_: my dumb brother who insists on having a head when it's_ clearly_ too big frickin' wound up getting his DNA inverted."

**Author's Note-yes! I couldn't wait for this part! I know it's a bit boring, but it all leads up to next chapter! ^FT^ Anyone notice what language Dimidium and Pleecy spoke? I used Google translate, so if it's not right, blame them. I was also waitin' to do Diz's intro scene. Also didn't turn out like I thought of it, just like last chapter didn't XD. Anyway, Thanks for Reading! ^FT^**


	14. A Very Bazaar Dash

**Author's Note - XD try listening to rock music like Linkin Park while reading this. XD If only you could have background music in books...**

"Is that everything, Pleecy?" Ley asked as Pleecy received yet _another_ strange bag.

"Just about. Now if only we could find those dm quadri."

Ley sighed. "I thought you quit swearing years ago."

Pleecy smirked, ignoring Ley's comment almost entirely. "_Bingo_. I think I see just the stand we need." Her eyes narrowed onto a particular tent like a scope on a gun. Just a few feet down the aisle on the left, it was another blue tent that seemed a bit more spacious than the others; the front entrance jutted somewhat into the aisle way in a tunnel-like fashion. Pleecy started for it.

"I got a _baaad_ feeling about that tent, Pleecy. Are you sure-"

"Ehehe, I don't blame ya, Ley, but trust me. We'll be fine. Just stick close, ignore everyone in there." Pleecy waited by the entrance for Ley to, reluctantly, catch up. "_Do not_ look anyone in the eye while we're in here. It's a kind of, ah_, _a_ bar, _let's call it."

"Oh lord, Pleecy."

"I'm serious! There's a lot of traders that hang around these. I used to do _plenty_ of business in these things. As long as you don't have any of the stuff _idiots_ sell in here, you'll be fine. If I'm not mistaken, it's against your vows to touch strong drink, anyway." Pleecy paused, tilting her head at Ley. "Ah, frickit," she muttered, "Say, do you have any Pheasant-Feather on ya?"

"I might." Ley reached behind her back, pulled out her odd looking Medicine Box that wasn't even a _box,_ and touched a part of its smooth surface where metallic blue coloring met metallic red coloring. A small little doorway faded into existence. She reached her hand in, which seemed to disappear inside, and after a few seconds pulled out two brownish-green speckled leaves in between her pinched fingers. They had edges that looked badly frayed, giving them the appearance of feathers. They were about the size of her hand.

"Good," Pleecy nodded. "Got any more than that?"

"Yes, I believe so. What for, Pleecy?"

"Well, we can't have the Pacifist symbol dangling from your ears and _sitting around your neck _while we're in here, now can we? And I'm assuming you wouldn't be willing to part with your earrings while we're in there."

"You'd be right on that note."

"Exactly. _Therefore," _Pleecy took the herbs, "We gotta hide 'em."

"Wait, _what? Pleecy-"_

"Sorry, Ley, gotta. Now hold still."

Ley closed her eyes in annoyance while Pleecy tinkered around with the feathers. She felt the feathers brush over her nose a few times, and she heard Pleecy rummage around in her Medicine Box.

"Gah! Fly trap!" Pleecy exclaimed as Ley heard her shake something off her arm. Pleecy peered into the tiny cone, stuck her hand in, and soon came out with a bundle of Pheasant-Feather herbs. "_Perfecto." _She turned back to Ley.

Ley felt her tinkering around again, this time on her collar. "Viola!" Pleecy exclaimed. "Es perfecto cenyorita! You can open your eyes now, Ley, I'm done."

Ley opened her eyes and looked straight at her collar first. Pleecy looked over Ley, making sure everything looked fine; Ley know had a pheasant-feather on each earring that covered the swirl on them. There was also a multitude of the herbs overtop of her collar, like an Egyptian collar a pharaoh might wear. She actually looked quite pretty in the herbs. "Now you look just like a Ruffian-Princess."

"A what?"

"A Ruffian-Princess. Old space myths, pretty much like an Amazonian woman warrior mixed with a _Star Wars _princess. People thought, and still think, that they'd go around cursing people who got on their nerves as part of the magick they'd do and crap. They're just stories to scare the crap outa gullible people, and drunken dudes at black market bars get _very_ superstitious." Pleecy snickered as if remembering an old joke. She donned a pair of shady looking black sunglasses. "Ready?"

"I guess…."

"Oh, I almost forgot! If anything happens, only use herbs, no physical fighting. If anyone gets on your nerves, keep your head low but still stare at them and mutter something under your breath. _Only speak a mix of Latin and Russian," _Pleecy instructed.

"You're kidding. Why?"

"Nope, I'm keepin' you alive 'til I finish some business, and that's what they speak."

Ley rolled her eyes. "You're worse than Jack Sparrow sometimes."

"Thank you."

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

The pair walked into the tent. Ley was surprised to see that it was just a small dark 'room' with a robed alien who looked like a terrorist version of Ixane standing in front of a circular door leading at an angle into the ground. Pleecy walked up to the alien with a confident disposition.

The alien snickered, "Well, well, little weird girl. Think you can handle a drink, heh?" in a wispy, creepy voice.

Pleecy did nothing but put her hand to the side of her glasses, pull them a little bit down her nose to expose her eyes partially, and looked at the alien. Her eyes glittered feverishly, like mini-fireworks. The alien's eyes narrowed, and he moved to the left of the small wooden door. "Good to see you back, _Pllleecy_," the alien smirked like a prison guard to a convict. He laughed suspiciously.

"Shut it, Denaro. C'mon Ley." She pushed the glasses back up and stamped three times on the door, _hard. _It opened from the inside.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

On the other side of the door was a bar bathed in red light and filled with aliens, mainly _males._ It was shaped like a rectangle tilted left, so Ley and Pleecy entered it from the top left corner. The right wall had a counter with seats, which were just cushions on metal pegs like a pirate bar. To the left wall was a crowd, all moving, some dancing, Ley figured, most fighting. Odd music blared from somewhere; Ley thought it was "Nobody's Listening" by Linkin Park. On the far wall a curtain that seemed to hide a door. A few of the four-legged crablike aliens as seen on the Resisty's ship were behind the counters. Ley hesitated at the steps leading from the door.

Pleecy looked back at her, motioning for her to follow, _come on, it's fine._

Ley looked around meekly, and then looked back at Pleecy - _I can't do this. _Her hand rested near her collar.

Pleecy rolled her eyes exasperatedly and pointed at the ground sternly - _Do. Not Move. _She turned and disappeared into the crowd. Ley saw her reappear at the curtain short seconds later.

Ley was alone, awkwardly alone in a bar full of shady aliens.

_...Great. _

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy shoved, tased, shot, and glittered her way through the crowd. Good Lord, what a hot mess! She finally managed to weasel her way to the curtain, guarded by another Ixane-terrorist alien, this time a slender female. Pleecy bared her eyes again, the guard moved aside, and Pleecy thrust apart the curtains dramatically.

This room was circular, with a circular table taking up the center. Multiple aliens were seated around the table, all bargaining in a formal fashion; orderly, quietly, the exact opposite of the hot mess behind her. The room was bathed in an aquamarine lighting. Most of them looked up at the pale 'hyuuman' female that just intruded, while others just kept concentrating on their haggling of each other.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Ley surveyed the room; talk about turmoil, chaos! She'd have to remember this as an example of the universe's chaotic nature. Ley noticed that the last few feet of counter, nearest the curtain, was completely left alone; no one had sat there, and Ley assumed it was because of the curtain's location and thought it might be a better place to loiter than where she was now, at the foot of the short steps.

Ley glanced at the aliens behind the counter, tuned in to the senses the pacifists always made it a priority to master: they felt quite friendly, and definitely sober. Yes, she decided, it would be much safer to wait than at her current spot.

She took a weary look through the crowd for a possible route; nope, there was no pattern, or much of a pattern anyway, in the crowd's movement. _Just walk straight through, ignore every being_ she felt a voice in the back of her head nag.

She did; she started into the crowd, very uncomfortable but sure of herself. Ley had to duck plenty of times as Solo cups and chairs and weapons and bodies and blood and other insane things flew through the air like Mayflies. She was knocked to the floor when someone bumped into her. She picked herself up, muttered under her breath, and started to back up. "Oof!" she muttered as she fell forward with a thud. She managed to catch herself before her head smacked into the floor. She felt a large, rather meaty hand pick her up by the scruff of her vest, flip her around, and set her down on the floor. "Watch where you're going, tiny hairy _thing_," a gruff voice spat. She craned her neck to look up at a grey-skinned beast, a male alien that looked like a planet-jacker. He was easily twice her height and _waaay _thicker than her, _by far._

Ley offered a sorry in Russian, watching as confusion spread over his face. She didn't move, just stared up at him with a blank expression. He bent down, looked her in the face, "What the hl are _you_ supposed to be?"

"Ну, что я похож?" She spoke Russian, _Well, what do I look like?_ with a confident not-caring-about-anything air.

The ugly male scrutinized her. "Ya look like a hairy Bug, or a living bad-luck charm, _lassie. _What are ya, an albino_?_" He joked, 'Bug' being a popular term used by rebels for _Irken. _

_*At least he can tell I'm female,*_ Ley thought, internally snickering as her past poked to the surface through her actions. She said nothing.

He chuckled. "What's with the feathers?"

"Разве ты не хотел бы знать, мужчина."- _Wouldn't you like to know, _male_._

He growled at her, annoyed.

"Вы мне на нервы," Ley said matter-of-factly - _You're getting on my nerves. _She tried telepathically contacting Pleecy, unsure if it worked. Ley hung her head slightly and muttered something like a Spanish-Russian combination, just as Pleecy had instructed.

The alien looked at her oddly, skeptically. Ley noticed the outline of a glowing quartz shaped stone on the ceiling, red and large, light up briefly in a rainbow, like a ribbon. The 'stone' dropped swiftly and conked the alien over the head. Ley walked around and away from him while he winced and rubbed his head. She spotted a disguised Pleecy just a few feet ahead, and dodged behind her. Pleecy lowered her head and spread out her arms as the alien walked up to her, seeing Ley behind her. Pleecy had taken her sunglasses off to better look for her friend, unfortunately.

Pleecy crossed her arms and straightened up as the alien bent down, looking her over, "Do I know you from somewhere?"

Pleecy scoffed and smirked evilly. "You _wish_, Ugly."

By this point, other attentions had been directed their way. Pleecy struggled to keep her eyes down, but knew it was no use; they'd seen her eyes already, most likely.

_Frickit._

"Ya know, I think your right: I've seen those eyes!' someone behind them said aloud. Other murmurs of agreement were heard as a few alien surrounded them.

_Ready to bolt, Ley?_

_Good Lord, I've _been_ ready._

_Wait for it…._

"Sorry boys, I gotta bolt," she sneered. Pleecy sprang into the air, deactivated her disguise, and landed in her characteristic catlike manner on the other side of the crowd. Ley saw her chance when everyone's attention was on Pleecy: she took off, darting between legs through the crowd and caught up with Pleecy. "Adios, _Idiosos!_" Pleecy cheered before they both dashed up and out the door Lucario-style, followed by a few lasers and throwing knifes and a few other weapons.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Pleecy barrel-rolled out of the tent, followed by Ley and a huge blast cloud of dust, apparently caused by an explosion that drew the people in the area's attention as well. She instinctively and quickly rose to her feet and moved over to Ley's right in the middle of the aisle way in front of the tent. "What now, Pleecy?" Ley asked through pants.

Pleecy laughed. "Run like hl, I dunno." She was giddy from the escape act. "Don't think that's good idea, though, _ehaha_! At least eight guys in there are about to come out – speaking of," she said as multiple aliens came out and took a petalled formation around them. Pleecy and Ley stood back to back. Pleecy put her hands together, and from in between them sprung a purple-ish pink energy blade. It could have easily been as long as she was tall. She held it in front of her, light saber-style, slightly crouched. Ley reached her hand behind her, ready to pull out an herb or something if needed.

Pleecy couldn't help but smile, and she could barely keep herself from laughing. Her first encounter with old enemies _and_ bounty hunters for _at least a century_ or so! _This'll be fu-un…_

"Ley," she whispered. "Remember what we told Neeka?"

"Yes, but I'm not sure if I can play a leafwhistle that loudly."

"Don't need to, not _that_ loud. She'll hear, trust me."

Ley sighed. "Fine." She took out a broad leaf, held it to her mouth with two fingers, and blew as hard as she could, squeezing her eyes shut from effort. A high-pitched note rang out as Pleecy back flipped over Ley, over the gap between Ley and a bounty hunter, and landed on the shoulders of said hunter, driving her blade into his chest in one swift movement before jumping off and landing behind him, the blade dissipating, as his body dropped to the ground. Swiftly, she got out of her crouched, catlike stance, turned, and started running Lucario-style again in the opposite direction.

With the others gawking at Pleecy, Ley sprang onto one guy's head, using it like a launch pad to spring from there to a shack's shaded roof. She landed on the tarp like it was a parachute, crawled over it, and hopped down into the next aisle. She started in the same direction running in the same style.

Pleecy reactivated her disguise in mid-run. She looked around and sensed Ley next to her, except in the aisle to her left. _Frickit._ They were each being pursued by at least four alien-males. Pleecy whipped around, put her hands to her head like Tien-Shenhan **(Dragon Ball Z character. Don't think I spelled the name right XD).** The men all stopped in their tracks as a bright burst of light blinded them – A SolarFlare, courtesy of Pleecy. "Ehaha, I didn't think that would work! Thank ya, Goku!" She turned and ran off to catch up with Ley, cackling all the way.

* * *

><p>Ley, on the other hand, was dodging and ducking through the crowd, never stopping, never slowing down. Somehow, two guys caught up with and flanked her. She stopped, and they stopped. She spun around and low kicked the one to her right, slipped a plant thorn from her sleeve, and *<span>Hadukened<span> the left one – spun around while rising to her feet and whipped the thorn like a Frisbee into his neck – then took off again, panting.

* * *

><p>Pleecy's path was blocked by two idiots, both with laser guns.<p>

"Big deal..." Pleecy cackled as she stopped a few feet from them.

She ran up at an angle towards the left one. He raised his gun, but she was swifter: as he aimed, she jumped up, kicked him in the forearm, snatched the gun, and launched off his arm into the other's face. She sprang, flipped in mid-air, landed with one foot on each of their shoulders between them, snatched the right one's gun, and pushed off into the air again. Almost in slow-motion, she reversed in mid-air and headshot them both. She landed not far from them again and ran off, shouting, "Headshot, Double Kill! A - Hahaha!" She laughed loudly and heartily as she ran.

* * *

><p>Ley ducked a laser. <em>*God, I feel like Sonic!,* <em>she thought sarcastically. She stopped in the middle of the aisle and dove into a tiny alley to her right.

She rolled when she landed just as Pleecy's silhouette sped past. Still panting and certain she was overheating, Ley rose, brushed herself off, and took off after her.

Moments later, Ley pulled up next to her old friend. "Hey Sonic, where's Shadow?"

"Ah, shut it, Tails." Pleecy smiled at Ley and looked ahead. The bazaar's edge was coming up, and feet beyond that was a gorge where Neeka was supposed to be. If she wasn't there by the time they got there, they'd be cornered. Not on Pleecy's watch!

"Grab on!" she yelled, and stuck out her arm. Ley grabbed it as a spider leg rapidly hefted her onto Pleecy's back. Pleecy sped up greatly as she passed the last booths and saw the two groups of men, now smaller in number, come around the corners to both her sides.

30 feet.

Pleecy extended her spider legs.

23 feet.

Pleecy narrowed her eyes, calculating.

15 feet.

_*Wait for it…*_

10 feet.

She thrust her other three spider legs a few feet ahead of her.

7 Feet.

Pleecy pole-vaulted over the gorge like a jumping spider.

**Author's Note- learned how to do the dividers, finally XD Thanks For Reading! **

***Haduken = a move my one friend does a lot. I've only seen it once or twice, so I described it from memory. A VERY BAD MEMORY XD. Heck, that was pretty close. **

**Anyway…First fight scene! Less conflict than I thought I'd put, but hey, wasn't that bad. What'chya think? ^FT^**


	15. A Taste of Pleecy's Rage

…Ley didn't expect much to happen when she felt Pleecy push off and had squeezed her eyes shut – most likely she expected death, injuries, heck, maybe even getting caught. She figured they'd smack straight into rock spires below or the side of the gorge in front. At least it would be quick. Hopefully.

When Pleecy launched off the edge, it felt to Ley rather like floating; peaceful, calm, airy sort of. That was all canceled out the moment her _already_ aching back collided with a metallic floor and she felt Pleecy do a few head-over-heels barrel rolls to ease their landing.

* * *

><p>Pleecy jumped, spider legs flying behind her and Ley wincing on her back: fearing the worst, no doubt.<p>

Pleecy knew she wouldn't - _couldn't -_ let _that_ happen.

Luckily, Ley's ship sped up to about ten feet ahead of her or so, hovering. It all seemed slow-motion to Pleecy – soaring through the air, blinking and seeing the ship _just be __there_, thrusting her spider legs ahead of her to land on the open window of the ship's side. She could hear Neeka urging her master to make the jump; "Come on!" It felt like eternity – and Irkens definitely know what _that_ felt like – before Pleecy smashed into the open side-window.

* * *

><p>Neeka scrambled to lean over the side of the bowl-shaped cockpit as Pleecy rolled into the window at break-neck speed. Pleecy whacked her head off the leather seat on the left wall.<p>

"Ow! God Irk it! Frickin' all of 'em! Dm bounty hunters…" she cursed, muttered, and growled through her spontaneous, momentary pain. Neeka noticed Ley on Pleecy's back, too still for comfort. Neeka switched to heat vision briefly; Ley was overheating.

"Master, Ley is overheating."

"Heh?" Pleecy said in a Zim-like manner, sitting up. Oh, yea! Ley was on her back. Being half-high from the jump, the speed, the chase, the sudden pain -

How could she have forgotten _Ley?_

Pleecy fidgeted around, trying to reach behind her back and feel for Ley. Good, still clinging like a koala. Pleecy used her spider legs to lay her on the seats along the left wall, which she had crashed into; she made a mental note to un-dent it later, when Ley was conscious.

Ley wasn't moving much. Pleecy felt her forehead – to hot. Definitely. Pleecy whistled, trying to get her attention, "Ley? Hey, yoo-hoo?" she whistled again. She sighed, and then remembered they were still over the bazaar. 'Neeka, you should 'prolly get us outa' here."

"Where to?"

"Good _Lord,_ anywhere but here! Stat, stat, _stat!"_

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Ley heard Pleecy whistle. "Ley? Hey, yoo-hoo?"

She'd tried to open her eyes, but now that they finally had stopped running, she didn't feel right. Couldn't catch her breath quite right. Too tired to open her eyes after squeezing them tight from fear. In fact, rest sounded pretty good about now…

…Not long after feeling the ship - she assumed it was the ship - leave the planet's atmosphere, Ley felt an ice pack on her head. Now _that_ woke her up, and felt nice.

She also felt a bit of sugar dance over her tongue. She smacked her lips approvingly, moving her tongue over her lips: _definitely_ awake now. Ley fluttered her eyes open, and she yawned. "Thank you, Pleecy. I much needed that."

Pleecy was hunched over her with a spoonful of sugar, antennas twitching, wanting to eat it herself; dang Irken taste buds. She smirked. "'Bout time ya' regained consciousness. You overheated."

"Yes, I can feel that. Unlike _you two_, I haven't had to _run for my life_ in a while," she said half-sarcastically.

"Well, it _does_ build epic stamina!" Pleecy laughed. "Ah, you've just forgotten what it's like, that's all," Pleecy said, nonchalantly waving her hand, as if that would help wave away the bazaar.

Ley sighed, almost laughing herself. She smiled, raising an eyebrow. "Can I sit up now?"

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Crisis averted. Now for the next step….

Oy,_ Venat_, of all planets!

"Time to pay Venat a visit," Pleecy said, back-bending. "Haven't been _there_ for years."

"Since when were you at Venat?" Ley, back at the controls, poked.

"Since Meekrob put a bounty on my PAK," Pleecy said matter-of-factly.

"Again, _not_ going to ask."

"What? I can't help it if the Tallests' had me do all their frickin' dirty work and tons of other jobs!" Pleecy was doubled over backwards, looking into the cockpit, shoulder blades touching her PAK. Pleecy chuckled. "Mainly I was an assassin, sometimes they had me on interrogation duty with prisoners, they've had me –"

"Why would _they_ have _you_ on _that _job?" Ley called over her shoulder.

"They think I'm good with questioning. _No idea _why," she grinned saying the last part.

"_Of course_ you don't…"

"Plus, they can be idiots sometimes. Oh, who'm I kidding? They've always been loony…. _Ooh! That reminds me_…speaking of Red 'n Purple, mind if we give them a call?"

"What for?"

"They gotta random secret Tallest-Herb-Garden-thingy, 'traditional' everyone says. Phooey, I think. I've been to it; they _also_ had me play _gardener_. Ugh. Bo-ring! Except the Garden-Snake fights," she chuckled at the – very _odd_ – memory, doing more stretches. "… Ugh…" she groaned, "…and I swear if that wasn't space weed I don't know what it was growin' in it!" Pleecy straightened up and moved into the cockpit. She stood to Ley's right in the cockpit. "There were also a few _rarer_ herbs, plus they have connections, too. I'll bet they can get us whatever crap we still need ta' get."

"Space weed…? N-nevermind. What else _do _we need, anyway, Pleecy?"

"The diamonds, some plants, I think." Pleecy seemed bored, tired. Ley noticed.

"Have you charged your PAK lately?"

"Oh God, Eha! I don't need to!" She snickered. "Just need to meditate every few days."

"Well, you probably should meditate before we call. In fact, I haven't meditated for a few days myself." Ley stretched her arms over her head.

"And why would I do _that_ when we gotta sick Dib-ling to gather for_?"_

"You look tired as a sick Meekrob!"

"Meh," she waved her hand, dismissing the thought again.

Ley sighed. "It would be best, y'know?" Ley had an idea: try a different approach. "You'll need to be in top condition on Venat, anyway; who _knows_ what could happen." She smirked slightly.

Pleecy mulled this over, then huffed, "Ugh. Fine. _After_ we call; who knows how long I'll need." Loophole! Pleecy smirked back, cramming Ley's own words down her throat.

Ley rolled her eyes. _*God, when will she slow down for once? I really can't wait for her to enroll…*_

_*I heard that.*_

_*Oh, get out of my head, Pleecy! You know I can keep you out if I wanted to.*_

_*But you're _not._* _Pleecy snickered, walking into the backseats.

"Oy…" Ley sighed. _*She's just pushing my buttons, as usual.* _Then she realized something. *_What do you know? An Irken with emotions...That's it; that's the Pleecy I know.* _Ley smiled, looking after her troubled friend. She turned back to the controls and prepared to call the Irken Tallest.

iLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiL

Red and Purple were stuffing their pie holes again, as usual. _This time_ they had Irken Lik-A-Stiks. As if they weren't already hyper enough, what with all the doughnuts…

"Incoming transmission!" one of the pilots called out.

"Mwell? Who mis it?" Purple mumbled through his candy stick.

"I-it," he wasn't sure how to say this. "It's a Pacifist ship, My Tallest."

The tall Irken duo looked at each other as the window switched to a video-phone call.

"Yo! W_a_zz-up, My Tallest?" Pleecy chirped from the screen, waving casually.

"Pleecy, what in Irk's name are you –"

"Doing in a Pacifist's ship? Oh, shut it Purple. Its _Ley's_ ship. She's my _friend._ I can be in her ship if I want to."

The Tallests' gawked at the screen. _Did she really just tell them to shut up?_

"Excuse me, Pleecy. Maybe you should watch your tongue; they _are_ still you're leaders," Ley suggested. "And only if I _let_ you, Pleecy," she joked.

"For now," Pleecy said, turning back to the screen with a smirk. Pleecy blinked in realization of the last part Ley said, "Eha! Ah, come on, you wouldn't care if I took it for a joyride admit it!"**(XD ^FT^)** The two larger aliens scowled, but also gulped. _That little disrespectful __**smeet!**_"_Anyway_, we need a few _ingredients._ Got any of these?" She pressed a button on the controls, and a list in Irken writing appeared on the Tallests' screen.

Red looked it over. "Do we have these?" he said to a random pilot. The pilot shrugged. Red thought a moment…

Maybe...

Wait!

…_Nope._

"Sorry Pleecy, I don't think we have _these_ particular ones. Did you try the –"

"Yes we tried the _Irking bazaar_. Almost got killed, as usual." Ley thought she said it so nonchalantly! How could she have taken _that_ lightly? Ley shook her head, facepalming.

"Quit reading our thought-meats, Pleecy! It's just creepy when you do that…" Red shuddered.

"Is that an _order_?" Pleecy taunted, giggling.

"_Yes!_ Very much a frickin' order, _Pleecy!_" Red exclaimed. He blinked a few times in realization. "Why are you with Pacifist Ley, anyway?"

"Long story, no time. You're certain you don't have the diamonds, at least?"

"Sorry, Pleecy. If we did"-Purple finished off his Lik-a-Stik with a chomp-"Ow!" he sucked on his finger. "-We'd gladly give ya it, but well, we… don't…have it, so…hmm…." He dumped the rest of the sugar into his mouth after an awkward pause.

Red rolled his eyes at his co-ruler. "So…how've ya been, Ley?"

Ley's eyes widened. "Fine, I guess." She blinked, confused, and raised an eyebrow. "You're asking …why?...Pleecy, are you okay?"

Pleecy had been tense and quiet for the past few minutes. She looked like she'd tear someone's head off at any moment. She was gritting her teeth, looking down, trying to keep herself from exploding. Not that it mattered, in front of these two _boneheads_. She just didn't want to hurt Ley, or Neeka, or risk damaging the ship. So, instead of shanking someone…

Hey, yelling helps, right?

Purple leaned back into the camera shot, sugar on his face, one eye narrowed.

Pleecy shook noticeably with rage. _Of course_ they would have to go to Venat! Why would she think any different?

"Grrr…._**DE-PAK A TALLEST!"**_She threw her head back, uttering the worst Irken curse she could think of.

And saying it _right in front of her leaders._ _Dang!_

How's _that_ for yelling therapy? _Huh?_

Like she cared, really. Anyone without the stupid 'live to serve' preprogrammed Irken instinct would do the same if given the chance – Irkens often sucked at holding in rage, or even holding a _poker face_, really. Now that took practice! That is, if they even _felt_ most other emotions, and that's a whole other topic _entirely_…

Red's eyes had widened. Purple keeled over backwards from shock. Ley just facepalmed and shook her head again. Neeka held back a few laughs in the backseats, expecting it all; expecting Pleecy to freak out over having to go back to Venat, over having to do all this travel and life-risking again, just to help her newest 'mission.' She even calculated everyone's responses to this and made a bet with the computer AI! Who now, _by the way_, had to cough up 20 volts.

Pleecy closed her eyes, lowered her head, and popped one eye open to see their reactions, taking deep breaths. "Humph, at least I didn't shank anyone this time," she stated casually to the Tallests', hands on her hips. And with that, she resigned herself to the backseats to meditate.

**Author's Note –Thanks for Reading! ^FT^ I suppose this chapter wasn't so bad. Seems a bit like a filler to me! XD oh well, whatever. I've just been wanting to write the last scene for a while, too! XD**

**Btw- thanks to Star Timeblazer for the inspiring review! I've had artist's block on all levels for weeks XD writing, drawing, flipnoting (even though my animation usually sucks), etc. I may not make another chapter for a while…again XD because of said blockage.**


	16. Music Above Venat

"…_Sometimes I get the feeling,_

_She's watching over me_

_And other times I feel like I should go_

_And through it all_

_The rise and fall_

_The bodies in the streets_

_And when you're gone_

_We want you all to know…"_ Pleecy sang. She had put one of her rock CD's in, and was now singing along to _"Welcome to The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance _while she drove the ship; Ley was resting/meditating, and since Pleecy had just finished meditating, she decided to give Neeka a break from all the driving. Plus, she wanted to see how this thing drove. She tapped her hands on the joysticks – the steering wheel of the ship, bopping her head all the way.

They were heading for the wormhole that would take them to the atmosphere of Venat; there, they'd head into Mt Uriel and look for _Dracon's Root_ in its lava chambers. Their plans had changed a bit, after the bazaar and Resisty incidents, Eheheh…; The ship had had time to recharge.

"_A world that sends you reeling _

_From decimated dreams_

_Your misery and hate will kill us all_

_So paint it black _

_And take it back_

_Let's shout it loud and clear_

_Defiant to the end_

_We hear the caaalllll -"_

"Perimeter warning! Continuum fluctuation ahead!" said the computer, pausing the music.

"Huh?" she said in a Zim-ish manner again. "Oh, _finally_! Up 'n at 'em, Ley! We're here." Pleecy made the ship dance* a bit too hard to 'wake' her up.

Ley, levitating a few centimeters on the seats along the left wall while meditating, flopped over rightward. She picked herself up off the leather seats, shook her head. "Pfft," she blew hair from her face, "was that necessary, Pleecy? I _could_ sense we were here, y'know."

"I know," she said with a toothy trickster smile, looking back at Ley. "Aight*, Neeka! Your turn. Ley: you'n me are sittin' this one out in back," she hefted herself out of the cockpit, lifting herself up with her arms and swinging her legs to land on the metal ringing like a gymnast. She brushed her hands against each other. Neeka, a black blur, sped to the front like Mimi would. Pleecy went over and sat to Ley's left, strapping in. Ley did the same.

The ship shook.

All but Neeka got a horrendous headache.

Neeka watched the yawning tunnel of brilliance and insanity open again, but it seemed….._different,_ somehow. Separate from the first: _much _different, but at the same time _much _the same. Huh. Oh well, for all her advanced tech and programming, wormholes of _any_ kind were just as unpredictable as living organisms.

"Ugh, w-well, there it is," Pleecy groaned, picking herself up off the floor and holding her head, which still had a splitting headache. Ever hit yourself over the head with a sledgehammer, or watch a coconut be split in two by one?…Yeeeaaaa, it's like that.

Ley looked out the side window, also holding her head; but hers wasn't as bad_, lucky!_ Below was a _large,_ Earth-like, green-blue orb. The land was a grass-green-rainforest-kind-of-green, a rich, bright color, like freshly watered spring grass, almost. The oceans - somewhat smaller than Earth's – were a deep blue, a beautiful blue. Unpolluted. The atmosphere seemed clean, normal, rich in carbon-dioxide: perfect oddball plant growing conditions.

Ley was awed, happy to look down upon a lovely planet, beautifully unpolluted, but Pleecy looked at it scowling. Contemptuous. As if every living thing down there was out to get that bounty – or rather, _bounties_; out to get her. "Pleecy…" Ley said, trying to snap her out of her scowling. She instantly looked over.

"Yea, Ley?" **(0.0)**

Ley looked at her friend a moment. "Nothing," she said quickly, "when will we be heading down?"

"Before we do _anything_, we're all getting some rest." She turned to the cockpit, called, "Neeka, recharge mode. I want you in tip-top creeper-fighting shape by 0-Earth-7-hundred-hours!" Pleecy sounded like a drill sergeant.

**Author's Note- bit of a shorter chapter. I figured that'd be a good place to stop. Thanks for Reading! ^FT^ I have to post another character design vid before Venat, so it may be a while, and yea I know I keep saying that. XD Raven663 and I may start a new fanfic, btw. A bit ZATR ish, a bit DATR ish, OCxOC, OCxT OCxZ, etc. not spoiling it for ya! We don't even have it fully worked out yet, so…**

***Made the ship dance = to make a car/etc. jerk forward repeatedly when it's stopped, like at a light. Best I can explain it. **

**Aight = (pronounced ah-eet) me-slang for all right, me-slang = how I say things sometimes.**

**Btw, I may start a PJO IZ crossover story in the meantime, once I re-read the PJO books real quick. It should be fast, prolly. Haven't read them for a few years I think and recently got back into it after reading TKC TRP. Gotta love Rick Riordan, huh? XD **

**I DO NOT OWN THE SONG TYPED ABOVE**


	17. The Lowland Jungles of Venat

**Author's Note – Warning: The next [few] chapter(s) will have lots of gore. :D**

Pleecy sliced the two-foot-long mosquito in half with her energy blade. The two halves fell to the dark rainforest floor, spurting goo and blood like a kinked hose. Multiple dark shapes Ley couldn't make out through the shade of the forest swarmed around the mosquito's remains, but then the scene was covered up by two leaves almost as large as Pleecy that covered it like a pair of hands. Pleecy stepped over it without a care, but Ley looked down at it sadly, like her eyes were screaming _that didn't have to happen, it didn't need to die. _

They had been continuing on like this for…eh, Ley figured maybe an hour or so, judging by the planet's sun. The forest was dark, bleak, and pretty much all kinds of green in color, dark green mainly in the shade. The canopy, _on the other hand_, was _waaay _over their heads, like six-to-20-stories way over their heads. That explained why the forest floor was dark with barely any speckles of sunlight and only scrub-or-bush-like plants and large leaved fern-like plants covering it. Thankfully, there was a well-worn dirt path over the planet Pleecy seemed to know like the back of her hand that the duo was taking to the volcano, Mt. Uriel's, base.

"How much longer, Pleecy?" Ley asked as they walked on, troubled by all the killing.

"Eh, not far now. 'Prolly 'bout a mile or so. Won't be long," she said casually. Ley rolled her eyes. "What?...Oh, come on! At lea –" – something that looked like the one prehistoric centipede-arthropod species things that was a bit taller than Pleecy reared up in front of her, screeching and waggling its stubby legs. Pleecy was turned around, talking to Ley over her shoulder. – "– st the wildlife is mo—" – Pleecy spun her blade around in a vertical circle, then pulled it back and stabbed the centipede thing clean through the abdomen. "– re docile today than most days. Usually, we'd be attacked every few feet."

"Like now?" Ley said, tilting her head to see the centipede thing, an eyebrow raised.

"Huh?" she said quite Zim-like. Pleecy turned around, "Oh." She turned her head back toward Ley. "Yup, like that," she said rather cheerfully, nodding, beaming a devious smile.

Ley facepalmed as Pleecy put her foot on the arthro-centipede and jerked her blade out of the twitching cadaver, letting it fall to her right, along the path. Pleecy stepped over it, not giving it a thought again. Her pinkish-purple energy blade didn't even have any blood on it! Ley stepped over it in the same mournful way she did for the mosquito buffet. "That's, like, the 50th thing you've killed today."

"Actually, 63rd," Pleecy swatted aside another bug, slicing it in half in mid-air. She looked at Ley, "But who's counting?"

Pleecy started slashing in X's at a bunch of vines hanging in loops a couple feet off the ground. They were the size of anacondas and hanging over the path for about ten feet ahead of them. "Did I _*slash!* _ever mention _*slash!* _how much I _*slash!* _ hate _*slash!* _rainforest planets? _*slash!*_" She stopped momentarily for Ley to catch up, looking over her shoulder at her, her blade lowered.

"Yes, Pleecy, multiple times," Ley said as she ducked around the hanging remains of sliced-in-half vines.

"Well I do." Pleecy raised her blade, still looking back at Ley. Instead of slashing apart another vine, she brought her blade down on the pollen-stalk-things of a giant pink-petalled plant that was sitting in front of her. It was big enough to eat them both; about twice Pleecy's height in diameter, with petals the size of the centipede-thing. She brought her blade down from her left shoulder, sliced off the anthers **(A/N: the pollen-stalk-things, the part that held the pollen; **_**according to a diagram on Google, so don't flame me if its wrong -****_****-'**_), then pulled her blade straight up, cutting the flower in half in one swift motion. The halves fell over to either side, and then started scooting away as other creatures pulled them into the brush and tree trunk forest for a feast.

"What was that?" Ley asked _almost_ casually.

"_Gigas __lilium __Venatian__," _Pleecy said a bit too nonchalantly, "The Giant Venatian Lily. Carnivorous, often featured in videogames and movies, strangles prey with its anthers; that is, if they don't suffocate inside the petals first. Like the plant in '_Ice Age 3'."_

"Does it have any seeds?" Ley said, tilting her head as they moved on.

"Not at this time of year, and _**NO**_, you're not taking any home. _**Irk. No.**_ Not unless you want to sterilize Earth…" Pleecy stopped, wide-eyed, stopping in the middle of the path: she had a stroke of _genius!_

Ley rolled her eyes_, again, _stopping behind her. "No, Pleecy. No alien-plant armageddons."

"Aw, but it'd be so _fuuun! _And quick: no pain! …._Wait_…okay, I take that back: _very painful!_ Ah-hahahahaha!" Pleecy cackled, throwing her head back and holding her hands out like claws, even though she was just kidding around.

Ley cleared her throat.

"Huh? Oh, yea, uh…ahem. Sorry, force of habit." Pleecy straightened up and smiled fake-but-sweetly, hands behind her back, trying to look innocent.

Ley sighed. "Come on. Let's keep going."

"Okay." The nanosecond after she said it, she swung around, energy blade in hand, and out of nowhere slashed the foot long tongue off of the huge head of a monitor-lizard-Godzilla-like reptile who had poked his head down into the path, tongue flicking. The tongue started flopping around and spazzing out on the ground. The reptile gawked at it, wide-eyed, and then pulled its head back up out of the pathway.

Ley shook her head, smiling; internally laughing.

"Let's-a go-a," Pleecy said and beamed, mimicking Mario. She made a motion like sheathing her blade. It faded away from her hand, which was at her right side from the sheathing motion. Pleecy's eyes and mark seemed to glow in the darkness of the forest floor, which was normal for Irkens, and the light from the clearing ahead caused her silhouette to make the darkness effect even more pronounced.

"Hey, Pleecy, there's a field up ahead," Ley said. Pleecy turned around.

"Oh yeah. Good; now I can see how much farther we gotta go. C'mon!" She waved for Ley to follow, already heading towards the light herself.

* * *

><p>They emerged from the forest into the clearing, blinking until their eyes adjusted. It was slightly vast: two of Ley's ships could have easily fit side by side in it. The clearing was rectangle-shaped (they came in at the bottom right corner) and full of waist high grasses that had red bulbs on their tips.<p>

Ley smelled a minty scent on the wind: the scent of an herb in bloom. She made her way over to the right edge of the field, vertical from where they came in at, where she deduced the smell was coming from.

Pleecy was standing on a small rock near the entrance, straining to see the volcano in the distance: though it was about a mile away, its size made it look like they were only a few hundred feet from it, a wall of brownish-red rock on the horizon. The volcano was considered a shield volcano, though it had partially steep sides like cinder cone volcano. She had her hand over her eye and her PAK was busy doing calculations on distance.

Pleecy was busy looking over the horizon still when she noticed a strand of black whipping about on the planet's Jetstream. It got closer, _fast,_ and soon Pleecy could make out its form: an American Dragon? What the -

"Oh _God_," she said as she backtracked. She dove to the right, rolling over until she was in the shade, where she rose up into her usual catlike crouch.

Something that looked _scarily similar_ to the descriptions of _Quetzalcoatl_ came barreling down from above the field, hissing. It was big enough to coil around the meadow twice over, a nice spring green color with a milky-whitish underside, and had a 20 ft. wingspan. The feathers all rippled in rainbow colors when it moved in the sunlight, like fish scales, but were primarily silver-white. When it reached roughly 30 feet over the field, a pinkish-purple transparent dome similar to Pleecy's energy blade grew over the field like a rainbow, growing from right to left. It covered the whole clearing. The _Quetzalcoatl _smacked into the dome headfirst, and its body accordioned in behind its pancaked head. Its fangs were visible since its face was smooshed against the dome. So were its eyes, which were bright yellow like honey with black slits for pupils.

The dome retracted, letting the _Quetzalcoatl _fall in an unconscious heap of coils and feathers to the ground. Pleecy walked up to it, plucked a few feathers and scales, and then walked around to the head. The head was as big as Pleecy's and was diamond shaped like a venomous snake's head would be. Its tongue stuck out of its mouth like it was tranquilized: odd, it wasn't forked much. More like a monitor lizard's tongue. The bottom jaw stuck out a little more than the top, and the eyes were half-open.

Pleecy stepped on the bottom jaw. The top jaw opened up at a 90 degree angle like a garbage can, exposing four over 6-inch fangs surrounded by ump-teen 3-inch teeth. Pleecy looked them over carefully. Eventually, she reached down, grabbed the bottom left fang gingerly, and yanked it out, poison sac attached to its base. There was an identical tooth behind where the fang used to be. Pleecy pulled an herb from her PAK and stuck it on the gap to prevent infection and help stop the bleeding. She added this fang to her armful of goodies as a mechanical arm poked up over her shoulder and shot them with a wide red scanning beam. The goodies vanished; teleported to the ship, most likely.

It was only after this when Pleecy realized Ley was whimpering.

**Author's Note – yes, **_**another**_** cliffhanger…I'm evil, yes? Or just annoying…yup, that's it XD. Thanks for Reading! ^FT^ btw, if no one knows what **_**Quetzalcoatl **_**is, don't worry. I didn't know until a while ago. It's a cryptid, also an Aztec snake god. The Lost Tapes episode for it is pretty good; phony looking at parts, but still good. XD**


	18. Ley's Wound and Heral's Flight Style

**Author's Note – this starts in the last chapter, btw.**

They emerged from the forest into the clearing, blinking until their eyes adjusted. It was slightly vast: two of Ley's ships could have easily fit side by side in it. The clearing was rectangle-shaped (they came in at the bottom right corner) and full of waist high grasses that had red bulbs on their tips.

Ley smelled a minty scent on the wind: the scent of an herb in bloom. She made her way over to the right edge of the field, vertical from where they came in at, where she deduced the smell was coming from.

Pleecy was standing on a small rock near the entrance, straining to see the volcano in the distance: though it was about a mile away, its size made it look like they were only a few hundred feet from it, a wall of brownish-red rock on the horizon. The volcano was considered a shield volcano, though it had partially steep sides like cinder cone volcano. She had her hand over her eye and her PAK was busy doing calculations on distance.

Ley crouched down at the edge of the field. There was a menagerie of odd-looking plants: some that looked like Venus Fly Traps except multicolored, strange ferns, neon-colored blossoms etc. etc…

She looked them over curiously, sniffing the air every few minutes. Eventually, she saw a small, neon pink flower similar to a Buttercup nestled close to the ground under other plants. Bingo! As Ley smiled **(:D)** and reached down to pluck it as far down the stem as she could, something whizzed past her eyes vertically and stung the side of her neck.

She gasped and sat up. A thorn the size of her hand was_ in her neck._ A thin strand like fishing line was strung between the thorn and somewhere in the trees ahead. She winced a moment, then moved shakily to gently slide it from her neck: jerking it would cause the serrated edge to tear the sides of the wound. A blur that looked like a rat with mandibles shot out of the bush to her left, grabbed the strand, and shot into the brush to Ley's right, which ended up ripping the thorn from her neck.

_Of course._

She put her left hand to her neck. The wound was bleeding profusely and was now sideways-teardrop-shaped, the point facing toward the right.

Ley's vision blurred momentarily. She shook her head, and it cleared.

_*Frickit,* _she thought, which was something _she __rarely_ thought! _*What was that?* _

Ley took her hand off the wound for a second, looked at it; her fingertips were red. She put her pointer finger to her mouth, tasting the blood and the poison contained in it. _*Ugh, sour: _Dagger Blooms._*_

"Gosh darnit," she said, looking at her stained fingers. Her head swam. She blinked a few times to clear the feeling, but the off-balanced feeling continued. She put a hand to her head, groaned from the ache. Her vision went fuzzy, and she flopped rightward into the grass with a whimper.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Pleecy was just sending her armful of goodies to the ship when she heard something. Her antennas perked up, and she waited, listened.<p>

There! A whimper…meager, almost inaudible, but of course Irken ears – er, uh, pardon me, _antennas_ – would hear it! They _are_ superior, are they not?

"What the Frick?" she said as she turned in the direction of the sound.

Had Pleecy still been holding anything, she probably would have dropped it from the shock of seeing her friend in that state: fainted, collapsed on the ground. Her eyes widened, "Oh… my… _God_, Ley!" Pleecy dashed over to Ley's side.

Pleecy cradled her head. "Yoo-hoo," she whistled, "hey, Ley! You okay? What happened?"

Ley's head turned slightly, "mmff, h-huh?"

"Ley, get the Irk up! - The Fri…? Oh my _Tallest_!" Pleecy had felt something seep through her glove and had turned her hand over to look. It had a reddish tint to it. _Then_ she noticed the gash on Ley's neck. "Good _Lord,_ Ley What happened?"

Ley's brow furrowed. "Th-thorn…" she managed.

"Thorn…?" Pleecy wondered aloud. Then it clicked. Her eyes widened. She hastily swiped some of Ley's blood and tasted it. "Gyah! Yee-uck! Sour! Gah!" Pleecy scowled, her eyes narrowing, "Dagger Thorn," she hissed.

She moved to heft up Ley. "Great," she grumbled, "another frr-ickin' patient." She hoisted Ley over her shoulder and looked around.

_*What _now_? We can't just stay here; I need to treat Ley, quick. So now what?* _Pleecy sighed exasperatedly.

She had another stroke of genius seconds later when she looked at the juvenile _Quetzalcoatl _in the middle of the field, and grinned evilly like a Cheshire cat.

"Ye-haw! Ehahahahaha! Get along little Quetzy! Whoooo-_hoo_!" she laughed. Pleecy sat behind the _Quetzalcoatl's _head, hanging on to a vine loop it had in its mouth, throwing one hand in the air like bull rider, having the time of her life, _again. _Ley was strapped behind Pleecy to the _Quetzalcoatl _by a loop under its chest. The _Quetzalcoatl _thrashed and twisted and torked around in the air like a streamer in the wind. He through his head back and screeched like a falcon crossed with the sound effect movies use for a dragon or something, and then dove downward.

"Whoooaaa…" Pleecy cautioned as he dove down like a roller coaster. She saw the ground rush towards them, then the _Quetzalcoatl _shot up at a slant to make a V. The clouds rushed past, and Pleecy stuck out her hand, grabbing a handful of cloud that melted away as they zipped toward Mt. Uriel. Pleecy cackled as the _Quetzalcoatl _corkscrewed and squiggled through the air. He seemed to burrow through the wind! Thankfully, it was only about a mile away, which left 99 more miles that Pleecy could ride him: _Quetzalcoatls _on Venat only let people ride them for about 100 miles, as to not let themselves be unwillingly tamed.

He dove into a full-fledged corkscrew, at a 45 degree angle. Pleecy hooted with delight. With an electric jolt her PAK reminded her where they were going, and she yanked up on the reins. The _Quetzalcoatl _curved up like the reins were attached to a wheel. He curved forward and started squiggling toward Mt. Uriel again.

"Whoo! Hahaha! Y'know what? I think I'll call you Heral! Yeah; that's gotta ring to it! Take us to Uriel, Heral, boy!" Pleecy laughed over the whistling wind. She combined 'spiral' and 'helix' for his name, unable to decide between the two; Heral. She thought that matched him well.

Heral screeched a reply, yellow eyes glinting in the sun. His mouth looked like he was smiling. He dove a few feet, made a left turn, turned right and continued straight on, his serpent body a twirling, sparkling ribbon on the breeze against the fiery, blazing blood-and-pollen sunset over the emerald jungle.

**Author's Note – God, I love the Heral scene. ^FT^ I thought of it last night like "derp!" and had a hard time describing how awesome and pretty it looked in my head. Did I do a good job? 0.0 The sunset was all fiery; reds and oranges and yellows. Oh, btw; Happy Easter!**


	19. Neutraltoxin and Campfire Backstories

**Author's Note – almost had more Artist block! Paramore helps a lot, turns out! XD Plus, I've been thinking about this chapter all day, anyway! Fun fact: poison's from plants, venom's from animals! XD **

Ley had been half-awake during the whole ride. Not surprising to her that Pleecy had decided to ride a _winged __**snake**_before treating her. Though it _was_ a good idea…

She lost total consciousness not long before they landed, and it was a few minutes after making camp that she woke up again. It was a bit blurry, but she was able to make out Pleecy's shape in front of her through the firelight cast, holding something under a green haze. After a few minutes of blinking, Ley saw that the blur was really a Venatian _Quetzalcoatl, _and Pleecy was trying to _milk_ it.

_Oy vae…_

Pleecy was crouched in front of Ley off to the side somewhat with a small glass container that had a canvas covering. Heral had his head in front of Pleecy by a few feet, jaws wide open: there could've been a three-foot gap between his jaws, even though he was only a _juvenile._ **(A/N: ** **Imagine the maw on a full-grown male! 0.0 I'm off topic XD)**

"Okay, hold still buddy," Pleecy said, inching toward Heral, "this'll be just like last time."

He squawked a quick reply before thinking, It_ gonna hurt this time…?, _half stated half asked,which Pleecy heard telepathically_._

"Oh, no it won't! Just _hold still_ this time!" His head lowered, and he looked sheepishly up at Pleecy like a puppy. "Look, you wanna help Ley, _right?" _He nodded. "Then _hold still!" _she asserted.

Ley laughed lightly. "You don't need to yell at him, Pleecy; he _is_ only a juvenile."

Pleecy's antennas perked straight up, and she looked at Ley, "Oh thank God!; Ley!" she hugged Ley - another odd thing Ley's seen this _Irken_ do, but that was only normal for _Pleecy._

She laughed lightly again, "careful, Pleecy; I'm still sore. "

Pleecy sat up, her cheeks turning a darker shade of green a little.

Ley laughed quite a bit at that. "Since when do you blush?" she asked, smiling.

Pleecy rolled her eyes. "Since _they_ _gave_ _me_ the special PAK," she spat with a scowl, even though she was still blushing. She shook her head quickly, the blushing fading away swiftly.

"Which was on your smeet day," Ley said, remembering. "I've just never seen you blush, or even _expected _you to, Pleecy!" she laughed.

"First time for everything, I guess…?" That just made Ley laugh harder. Unexpectedly, Ley winced, grabbing her abdomen.

Pleecy nodded, "mm-hmm, yup; time for more neutraltoxin."

"_Neutraltoxin?"_ Ley asked, and then something connected in her head. "Quets have neutraltoxin?"

Pleecy stood up, brushing herself off. "Venatian Quets do: Young Quets can't handle the adults' venom. _Therefore_, the adults' developed a neutraltoxin they inject into prey after it's died and before they give it to the nestlings."

"Well, _that's_ something I've never heard."

Pleecy stretched. "Mm-hmm. _Okay_ Heral, get over here," she said half-lazily.

Ley heard…a whine-like sound, similar to a dog's whine or a toddler's whine if they didn't want to do something. Heral's head lifted into her vision field, up to Pleecy's eye level.

"_Open up,"_ Pleecy urged, partially annoyed.

He bared his maw again; it looked to Ley like he could swallow Pleecy whole, since his almost-180-degree-stretched jaw was almost as big as Pleecy was tall. Pleecy looked over the teeth, and then pushed the container in her hand against his upper right fang. Instead of having a purple tint to it, the hollow fang now had a white color. Ley saw a milky liquid flow from inside the fang to inside the container. When it was half full, Pleecy tapped his nose. Heral pulled his fang from the canvas, closed his mouth, and moved back to the right, where he'd come from. A doctor's needle the size of Pleecy's hand slipped from her flowy sleeve into it.

As Pleecy filled it, stabbing the canvas and pulling the back of the syringe up, Ley took her first look around where they were, wherever that _was_: A small, circular clearing. It was way into nighttime, and Ley could see the firelight flickering from off to the left somewhere she couldn't see in her field of vision. She could make out three coils stacked on each other a few feet away from her at the edge of the clearing, which was big enough in _diameter_ to fit a Tallest _laying down._ Ley herself was laying on a leaf pile up against a huge tree trunk. All the trees were the rough-looking-barked Monkey Puzzle. Looking up, Ley could see constellations; the stars were beautifully _much_ brighter than they were on Earth. She could also see one of Venat's two moons, Ioux, ( i-youx,) cratered and huge, looming and lounging on the tree line, which was high over their heads but not _nearly_ as high as it had been before.

"Where're we at, Pleecy?" Ley asked, still looking up; playing dot-to-dot with shimmering diamonds in the sky to make patterns traced with her eyes.

"Huh?" Pleecy said, looking up from her syringe-filling, "oh! We're in the main Rainforests; those were just the scrubby Lowlands before. Trees were taller, yeah, but the *diurnal wildlife here is more deadly, more precise. The Lowlands were just full of insectiods. There's all kinds of stuff hidin' here: therefore, we can only travel at dawn, dusk, and twilight. Which means you're restin' _now_, until the sun rises." She seemed to command the last sentence.

"You seem to know this planet well, Pleecy."

Pleecy sighed: Ley knew then and there that she had struck a nerve. Pleecy had a sad, distant look in her eyes. "Yea, I guess," Ley noticed how her face lit up a bit more before she looked up and said, "but I'm an invader, I get around. You saw the bazaar; I've met people, seen places, y'know."

"Yes, but _I _didn't even know about the neutraltoxin thing, and I've been around just as much as you have." Ley had a realization. "This is where you 'took your break' at, huh?"

Pleecy sighed and seemed to smile distantly. "Yeah," she said exasperatedly, "yeah it is. Neeka and I lived in a few different bungalows here for a while. Or at least, until the whole 'bounty flare' died down enough for me to return to work. The Control Brains thought it would be a good idea; it kinda was. I learned a _lot. _And I mean a_** lot**_. Heck, had we not learned _fast_, we'dve been dead a bazillion times over. It takes strategies, or in the wildlife's case, an epic path of evolution, to live here, Ley. Without smarts, common _or_ instinctual, intelligent beings without their natural instincts, like Irkens, for example," she explained sorrowfully, looking at Ley momentarily before turning back to her work, "can't survive long on Venat."

Ley nodded. "I remember you sending me those leaf post cards," she laughed lightly at the memory. "That'd explain why you pretty much know everything about the wildlife. _And_ why you took a joy ride on Heral," Ley joked.

"How'd you know his name?" Pleecy said, smirking at Ley.

"I was - kind of – conscious during the whole ride," Ley smiled weakly.

"Speaking of sickness; such a delightful topic!;," Pleecy knelt down next to Ley, where she'd been before, holding the syringe. "crane your neck a sec, would ya?"

As Pleecy shot up Ley with another hourly dose of neutraltoxin from Heral, the forest around them lit up with bioluminescence and resounded with the calls and screeches and wails of Venatian wildlife. Heral screeched at them once. The sounds sent a chill down Ley's spine…

**Author's Note – so now we hear some of Pleecy's backstory: but that's only a tiny fraction of her past! XD May not update for a week or two, btw. Anyway, thanks for Reading! Oh! Almost forgot! Thanks to Star Timeblazer, one of my fav authors on here ^FT^, for reviewing…twice! That made my already-epic-mood-from-being-in-full-fledged-Writer-Mode even epic-er! XD is that even a word? Whatever. I'm off topic again! XD yay! **

**Diurnal – awake during the day. Opposite of Nocturnal. **


	20. Dawn

**Author's Note - I know, forgot to explain what neutraltoxin is. XD BTW, I just made up the word, though antivenom would have similar effects, anyway.**

After a night of resting through Pleecy injecting neutraltoxin into Ley's wound, Ley began stirring a little bit after dawn. Pleecy was about to wake her up when she sensed her coming to.

Ley opened her eyes groggily, but thankfully still alive: the neutraltoxin had finished its job.

Neutraltoxin is a substance that not many species are known to be blessed with biologically making. When injected into a body, and whoever received it was suffering from some sort of toxin, it…well, neutralizes the toxin, breaking it down, chasing it down, and strengthening the body in turn as well. For some races, it eventually has an effect like that of recovering from wounds has on *Saiyans; just like Saiyans, they give the receiver more strength. Neutraltoxin was rare, but always considered a blessing from some 'higher being' to people lost in the bush, or _worse_: horribly injured. Rumors say it also heals wounds, not just toxins. But those are just rumors, _riiight?_

When her eyes focused and woke up, Ley saw Pleecy across the small clearing from her leaning against a Venatian Monkey Puzzle tree, bouncing her special Vortian super bouncy ball against a tree across from her, just a few feet away. The ball bounced in a rhythmic way: bounce against the ground between Pleecy and the tree, hit the tree, fly to Pleecy, repeat. It made a thud each time it hit the ground and made the tree rustle and spew new creatures running away when it hit the tree.

Ley yawned and glanced around. Where they were now was all one shade of bright, vibrant green; ferns, trees, grasses, everywhere, like an Appalachian forest crossed with a young natural rainforest. "Pleecy, where exactly are we?"

"_Exactly?_ About a few hundred feet from Mt. Uriel," Pleecy responded matter-of-factly without looking from her ball.

"You're kidding? You flew all the way here?"

"Mhm," she hummed and pointed forward, past the tree she was bouncing her special ball off of. "Uriel's right over there. Unfortunately, you woke up a bit late for us to head out, so the best thing for us to do would be to rest up before we go boil ourselves."

Ley looked to the sky, beaming from her friend's (hopefully) kidding. It was a mixture of pale blues and pastel yellows: late morning.

"If you can't take it, I'll do first watch," Pleecy said, catching her ball just before it smacked her in the face and looking over at Ley.

Ley, snapping back into reality wide eyed, blinked in realization of whet her friend said. "O-oh, no, it's okay. I can take first watch. You need to rest more than I do. Besides," Heral put his head in her lap, and Ley stroked the top of it, looking down at him. "I'll have Heral to help me."

Pleecy put her ball back in her PAK, unconvinced. "Well, if you think you're strong enough." She slumped against the trunk. "If anyone needs meh, I'll be in recharge mode," Pleecy said half-slurred, then her form went slack and she looked as if she was truly sleeping, even though that was impossible for Irkens (excluding Pacifist Irkens) to_ truly_ sleep.

Ley and Heral sat there for the afternoon, just hanging out. Ley ate some soup since she was still a bit weak around Noon, and Heral screeched at a few things, but that was about it. At least, until suppertime, it was.

* * *

><p>After eating a sandwich, thinking that her body was well enough for a sandwich, Ley decided to do some cloud watching. She had her head back in the leaf pile, Heral curled around her form with a wing protectively over her. Ley felt the most peaceful she had felt ever since Pleecy left her an urgent message at home, after Dib...well, you know. It was all quiet, peaceful, comfortable, beautiful.<p>

Fast as lightning, a black blur shot from the bushes off to her right, which was even _faster_ scooped up by Heral in one bite like a gulper eel. It took Ley a few minutes to realize what had happened: a rat-thing had sprang at her, and Heral ate it in mid-lunge. He had just calmly and quickly put his mouth around it and _POOF!_ Rat-crab-thing flavored snake chow. Or rather, Quetz chow. At least they didn't have to worry about feeding him for the hundred miles they would be allowed to ride him!

Just before the sun slipped down behind the distant trees to take its own nap, Pleecy woke up and started packing what little she had to put away; a few medical supplies, and few snacks, not much else, really. She put the fire out as she packed by putting a psychic bubble around the flames and letting them suffocate. When she finished, she turned to Ley. "We're all packed up. You got your SPF 50,000 ready?"

Ley smiled. "Sadly, I left mine at home on my night stand. Guess we'll have to make do with the old fashion way."

**Author's Note - Saiyans = alien type from the epic Dragon Ball Z series. After healing from an injury, their strength increases depending on how bad the wound was.**


	21. The Caverns of Mt Uriel

**Author's Note – XD I was listening to Hunger Games videos while typing this. 3 (typed **_**that**_** a few days ago XD)**

They took Heral as far as the summit, which took almost a good hour to reach. Heral stayed in the Jetstream to fly until they reached just over the mouth of Mt. Uriel. He made a few circles over it until Pleecy was certain they were close enough to the mouth, but not to close so Heral wouldn't get caught in the updrafts of hot air from the volcano. Heral hovered about seven feet over the mouth, body twirling and twisting in the air like a streamer, feathers reflecting bloodily from the magma's faint light.

Looking down from Heral's back, Ley and Pleecy could see the gaping maw of the volcano, easily Heral's length in diameter. Down below at least fifty feet was a churning stew of molten rock: magma, bubbling and red-orange-with-streak-of-yellow hot. In the middle of the opening, they could see a small island of perfectly circled rock that was about one fourth of the mouth's size, big enough to hold one person at a time.

Pleecy, unaffected by the sight of the planet's deadly blood, moved to Heral's prehistoric head, steadying herself on the ridges above his eyes on the very top of his head. She looked down on the mountain's maw, examining, waiting.

_Eager._

Heral held his head as level as he could, making a few objecting rumbles. Finally, Pleecy smirked like someone looking for thrills and front flipped into the volcano. One, two, three, four, five, Ley counted at least seven summersaults until Pleecy landed in her usual crouched way on the rock isle like the epic heroine of a myth. She stood, brushed herself off a few seconds for show, and called up to Ley in a happy tone you wouldn't expect someone surrounded by magma to have: "Your turn!"

Ley focused, and tapped Heral on the top of the head to get him to straighten out. He did, so he looked like a runway for an airplane; a wriggling, flying, scaly runway. Near his tail but not far enough for Heral to not be able to support her, Ley began a flying leap. She ran from his tail to his head, gave a mighty jump to about three feet above Heral's head, and did a few summersaults like Pleecy did, but not as many. She looked like a spy tumbling down from a ceiling to steal something. Upon landing, however, Ley ended up on her feet staggering to try and stop and Pleecy had to help her so she didn't stumble off the rock circle. Ley looked up in time to see a ribbon of green move over the mouth quickly, glinting in the sunlight.

The room they dropped into was the cone of the volcano. Ley flipped her gray-and-purple goggles down over her eyes, and both girls' clothes flared around in the hot air: Pleecy's sleeves and dress, Ley's Dib-like vest. It was a chamber as big as a classroom if not bigger, with sloped in sides of brown igneous rock and a few spires of rock sticking up in the lake of magma - stalagmites, Ley guessed. Pleecy was still grinning like crazy, as if she'd wanted to be doing this insane stunt _again _forever. _Yes,_ Ley figured, Pleecy'd been in the volcano before. Pleecy did a sideways point like an explorer off to the right, where a pathway of stepping stones about a foot apart from each other sat.

"Thankfully, this part of the planet's not tilted toward the sun much at the moment, which means that the magma will be more receded. That way's the main chamber. _Dracon's Root, _if I remember correctly, usually grows in a few of the lower chambers that branch off from there," she said, dropping her hand down. Thank Irk for an Irken's perfect memory: as they say in space, _an Irken never forgets!_ Which is true, thanks to the PAK's backing up of memories in its memory banks.

"You first, Pleecy: you seem to know the mountain better, anyway," Ley said over the low rumble of spinning magma. Pleecy just looked at her oddly, hearing the miniscule amount of fear in Ley's voice.

Pleecy laughed lightly. "You've lost your edge, Ley: Ah right, follow me. Make sure to keep your balance. Do what you need to; hold a stick, put your hands out, whatever."

"Besides holding on to each other," Ley pointed out as Pleecy moved toward the stepping stones.

"Yes: that would be bad." She said over her shoulder. Pleecy leapt onto the first stone, arms out, then the next and the next, until she reached the huge arched entrance into the next chamber. She seemed to stay absolutely level as she hopped from stone to stone, seemed so sure, so confident in her movements. Ley, on the other hand, hadn't pulled stunts like this in years.

Ley looked down, knowing she'd have to watch her footing and scamper across carefully. She made her way across in the same fashion as Pleecy, except slower and more precise, careful, picking her way across.

Soon, they both were on the walkway along the right part of the archway and the right wall of the next chamber. Pleecy was leaning on the right arch wall, looking sideways at Ley as she picked her way over. She helped Ley off the last stone, since she was stumbling nervous and doubled over with her hands on her knees when she hit the walkway. She had pretty much held her breath on the way over. She looked up to her blank-but-intense-faced friend. "Well," Ley said a bit shakily, "which way next?" she laughed lightly.

Pleecy smiled and, seeing a perfect drama moment, swept her arm over the view of the next chamber. Ley rolled her eyes at her friend's gesture.

The next chamber was like the last, but _much _ the far wall was a 3-layer tier of rock, like a wedding cake, almost. In between them and the rock tiers was a canal of magma in a curved shape. There were two tunnel entrances they could see from where they were. One was off to the left, level with the curve of molten rock, with the river of magma flowing on its floor. The other was at a slant in a curved part of the wall near the ceiling. It was just above and to the left of the second tier of rock. Walking around the corner, they saw that the magma flowed from another shoot-off tunnel on the right wall. A bridge of rock arched over the magma, carved out by the constant flow of magma. It seemed to have been part of a former pipe made of rock that had the magma inside it.

"Interesting: I never assumed a volcano would be bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside," Ley said somewhat sarcastically.

Pleecy laughed a bit at that and gently facepalmed. "It's Venat, Ley," she said, laughing with exasperation. "Just like everything else in the multiverse, things aren't always what they seem…" the last part had a slight sinister sound to it. "And it's a cartoon anyway! What'd you expect?"

Ley tried to ignore the sinister-sounding part. They both looked up at the tunnels. "So, which way?"

"Dunno," Pleecy simply said. "Gotta look 'round."

* * *

><p>Tunnel 1 had a rockslide when they found a dead end where the magma simply flowed under the rock wall and Pleecy thought that maybe there was a chamber behind the rock the magma was flowing under. Take a guess at what caused the roof to collapse. They had made a mad break for the tier chamber.<p>

Tunnel 2 was hard to get into in the first place. Flying leaps barely made it onto its slanted floor. Instantly, the only thing found in there was a weird creature that looked like a Hogulus crossed with a Bison or buffalo or something with a nest full of eggs. Flying leaps barely made it off the edge of the slanted tunnel without becoming cooked female traveler flambé.

Tunnel 3 took a few minutes to navigate, led to more crossroads, and eventually opened up into a tall cylindrical room. All but the wall the doorway was in had magma waterfalls emptying into a pool of glistening lava: yup,_ lava, not magma_, because the ceiling was open and full of a view of one of Venat's moons. The moon's light reflected off the horseshoe shaped pool around an oval shape piece of rock. Across the room from them, on a large piece of rock jutting out from the water – uhm, _lava_fall, they saw a small glittering...thing. All they could see was what looked a lot like the light from a star, silvery-lilac in the moonlight.

"Perfect," Pleecy purred.

Ley looked at her questioningly. "It's night," Pleecy explained. "A blue moon. That means the flower will be in full bloom: _exactly_ what I need."

"A blue moon? But wouldn't you –" Ley stopped when she saw the _really? _look on Pleecy's face and realized she was holding back the pain of what moons do to Mystics. "_Oooh_, right. But wait…I thought we only needed the root. What do you mean you need the flower?"

"Oh, well, ah, uhm…m-my studies, y'know?" Ley nodded, knowing Pleecy didn't ever talk about what she does in her lower labs. "Plus, the _root is_ what we need; the plant's named for it."

"Oh," Ley said, nodding slightly, then looking back to the large bit of sparkle on the ledge. "So, how're we going to get to it?"

Pleecy looked at her a few seconds, then Ley could see the wheels turning in her head as she smiled slowly, evilly, revealing zipper-like teeth. Ley sighed, shaking her head, as Pleecy extended her spider legs and used them to help her shoot into the air about a third of the way up at a slant leftwards. As she dropped a few feet, a pinkish-purple transparent rectangle at an inward slant appeared just below her, which she landed on, sprang off of, and soared up at a low rightward angle, like a 130 degree angle or so. Pleecy did this about two more times before she soared from the right and barrel rolled onto the ledge. Ley wasn't surprised by her friend's agility after years of seeing it; more like…intrigued, sort of, you could say. She wasn't sure herself, really.

* * *

><p>Pleecy rolled once and got to a stance on the ledge like Spiderman to stop herself. She rose and approached the flower on the edge of the ledge.<p>

The flower looked like it had been made by Artemis herself, or at least by some sort of magic or *magick: it was smaller than Pleecy's' hand. It looked like a silvery-lilac petal-colored lily, reflecting the moonlight strikingly like a disco ball, so when it moved it twinkled brightly and largely like they saw from the ground, a star on the earth…er, well_, Venat_. Oh, you know what I mean! A few bits of reflected moonlight made the lava gleam and shine too, like oil in blood. The stalk and two tiny leaves glimmered a silver-emerald, making it look like it either _was_ half-dead or the most beautiful flower some people could think of, made of precious metals and gems instead of being a rare piece of foliage.

_iLiLiLiL_

"…What…the..._heck_...did you guys do!" Dib shrieked at the robot and rabbit in the kitchen. He had come up to grab a soda and hang out in the living room until Diz called him down. When she would, he wasn't sure, so he had come up Pleecy's kitchen elevator and soon went slack jawed.

The walls, ceiling, floor, _everything, _was dripping with melted chocolate – at least, knowing _Gir_, he _hoped_ it was chocolate – like stalactites. Sugary, sticky stalactites Gir had _no. Business. Being. Near._ Gir sat on the table jutting from the wall across the room, looking as innocent (DAAWW…cue fangirl squeals) as ever, and Star was at the counter near the fridge, happily humming carefree while she stirred a bowl of brownie batter, seemingly oblivious of the mess surrounding her. She stood on a tripod stool against the counter. How she could hold the spoon with her paws, Dib had no idea, but then again Gir could hold stuff with his nubby little disguised dog arms. Go figure.

She glanced at Dib with a tip of her head. She had an apron on, which seemed kind of odd to Dib, surprisingly. Rabbit with an apron or not, he should have been used to finding odd scenes ever since Zim arrived. "Pardon? Oh. Gir wouldn't sit still and he wanted to, quote,"—she made air paw-quotes—""bake sometin' 'dan eat it"." She shrugged. "I was craving brownies anyway. And I haven't baked in a while."

Dib's antenna twitched and he raised a now-invisible eyebrow at Star. 'Since _when_ do _you_ crave human foods? I thought you were a frickin' bunny!" He said somewhat sarcastically, somewhat freaked. Star just shrugged again.

A voice from behind Dib said, "She's just in casual mode, Dib." He looked over his shoulder, expecting Gaz, the computer, or Diz. Sure enough, it was an Irken who looked quite similar to Tak except with more authority and height: Diz. No question about it.

"Casual mode?" Dib asked.

Diz changed the subject, seeing that Dib had no idea about Star. "Anyway, I need to get a few X-rays from you, Dib, down in the medical bay. I'll meet you down there, but be quick; I have a picnic planned for us today!"

Dib blinked in confusion, wide eyed. "A picnic?" he said in a doubtful, sarcastic tone, antennas drooping with a look on his face like _really?_

"Yup!" Diz cheered, nodding, smiling with eyes closing to make upside down V's. "One of the many rules we're taught as Tactic Commanders is that intelligent beings go crazy without fresh air, without interaction with other intelligent beings besides the ones they've been stuck with for days, without access to the world." Her eyes had grown a faraway look in them as she talked, and her cheery expression had faded. Her squiddly smooch threatened to expel her breakfast of snacks, but she made sure not to let it show on her face. Her antennas drooped back.

Dib snapped his finger in front of her face. "Yoo-hoo?" he whistled, "Hey, Diz? Yoo-hoo!"

Diz shook her head. "O-oh, sorry. _Anyway, _I'll meet you downstairs," and with that, she turned and went back down the kitchen elevator in the floor.

* * *

><p>Okay then, let's see here," Diz said absentmindedly as she looked over the X-rays hung up over a fluorescent light with a screen set into the medical bay wall. She ran her finger over it as she looked over the pictures of Dib's organs.<p>

Thankfully, in the time the girls had left, (about a week, maybe week and a half or so) they hadn't changed too much. Every few days Dib felt a bit sick and usually lost the last meal he had. Sometimes it wasn't as bad, but normally he said it was gut-wrenchingly painful at times, and that had Diz worried about how his body would react as the changes progressed. At least his…whatever digestion organ he had…wasn't turning knots around itself, so that was good. Maybe not the news they needed, but it was still good news nonetheless. Diz had been giving him herbs Star prescribed from Ley's botany labs to help calm his stomach…er, whatever, you get the point.

"Is it bad?" Dib asked meekly from her right, looking over the X-rays and barely understanding them himself.

Diz didn't answer immediately. "…No…" she said slowly, as if in her own world as she examined Dib's insides, which was a bit creepy to him, but he grew used to it after a few days, "Not really. Remember how we weren't sure when they'd start to merge?" she asked, pointing at picture of his whole abdomen in the left upper corner.

"Yeah…?" It had been a very odd conversation the other day: when his organs would start moving to fuse and make a squiddly smooch. Just thinking about it made him want to lose his brownies. They had discussed things like how long until it started or how long it would take…or, Dib had asked, if it would be painful ( he assumed it would, what from all the stomachaches), to which no one gave him an answer and took a sudden interest in Pleecy's tablecloth or the walls or the floor.

"Well, it's about to start. Look here." She pulled out an X-ray from the day before from a yellow folder with Irken writing on it. It sat on a table under the lights in the wall. She held this X-ray up in front of the light so Dib could see it too. "See? The liver and a few others moved a tiny bit today."

"God, how can you _see_ that?" Dib asked exasperatedly.

Diz tilted her head and looked at him from the corner of her eye. "You can't?" she asked, honestly surprised. "Irken eyes can see much more than most species can. Just focus on the differences."

Dib remembered his new eyes and facepalmed. Whether it was because of him not remembering his eyes or not being able to see the movements, Diz wasn't sure. Turns out he was just annoyed since Diz forgot that he was still _human _too. "Well, it's kinda hard to focus on them if I can't see them," he mumbled, looking up a bit, his hand sliding down his face farther.

Diz rolled her eyes. "You like to argue, don't you?"

Dib opened his mouth to argue, but then Star came down. "Basket's all packed, guys." She stopped when she saw the exasperated looks on both their faces, and then backed out the doorway as the auto-door dropped down swiftly. Dib sighed and looked down.

Diz cleared her throat. "You should probably put your disguise on now." Dib looked up as she talked with a somber expression. "What's wrong, Dib?"

"Well, I was planning on keeping it off until we left, y-you know, since I'll probably have to get used to…" his voice trailed off.

Diz's eye widened. "Oh, Dib, it's not gonna come down to that!" she said, her commander training for keeping a 'proper tongue' slipping away for the moment. Diz gave him a quick hug and held his shoulders, "They're gonna make it in time; I know they will. I've known Pleecy to make even shorter deadlines than this. Don't start thinking like that or I'll get Gaz to knock some sense into you! You're human, _got it?" _ Thank Irk for required Invader Persuasion (pep talk) classes!

Dib looked alert when she said about Gaz. His antennas perked straight forward and his eyes widened. He nodded, a sad look in his brown Irken eyes, which Diz noticed.

"Now Come on. Let's go enjoy a picnic!" Diz kept a hand on his shoulder and steered him towards the auto-door of the medical bay, crossing her fingers in silent prayer behind her back.

**Author's Note - wanted to post this on Pleecy's birthday, 4-16-12, but didn't have time to finish. Omg when I was just about to finish the last paragraph, "Broken" by Seether and Amy Lee from Evanescence started playing on my playlist and I thought it fit perfectly for the last scene! XD Anyway, Thanks for Reading! ^FT^ BTW I'll explain the difference between when I use magic and magick in a different story coming up. **

**Lava- above ground, Magma- below ground.**

**P.S. I'm just about to finish rereading PJO so I may have a crossover w/ that and a side IZ story coming up while I plan for MM 2. After this.**


	22. Another Stupid Stunt, Courtesy of Pleecy

A low rumbling noise echoed through the caverns like a growl; like a mad animal. Pleecy heard Ley yell something out, a warning or question perhaps, but couldn't hear her from a combination of distance and the roaring noise reverberating off the rock walls. The lavafalls seemed to get bigger, flow faster. Even the ground seemed to shudder. A few rocks fell off the rim of the skylight in the ceiling above. Pleecy's eyes widened.

"Ley! We gotta go: _Now!"_

* * *

><p>Heral lowered his tail down for the girls to grab, trying his best to stay just over the mouth of Mt. Uriel while the heated air buffeted him, trying to push him away from his rescue mission.<p>

"Get going!" Pleecy yelled over the roar of planet blood rising, steering Ley towards his tail from behind her. The duo had dashed back to the main cavern, under the mouth of the volcano.

Ley did a small spin to the left to get out of Pleecy's pushing and shook her head once determinedly. "I'm not leaving you," she said firmly with a defiant scowl.

Pleecy's antenna twitched. She grabbed Ley by the wrist and pulled her towards herself, then turned Ley around and resumed steering her towards the tail-rope from behind. _ "Get. You're. A_**. _Up. That. Snake __NOW__!" _she commanded, pushing her a little ways up as Ley grabbed onto Heral.

Ley resentfully started to climb, gently hauling herself up Heral's scaly tail as to not hurt him. He tensed his tail and started to lift it steadily. Seeing this, she hitched her feet on either side of his tail on small, near invisible bumps in his tail* where his legs would be (if he _had _legs) like steps on a ladder.

Mt. Uriel was in the middle of a _swelling_ – an Irken scientific term for when the magma level in a certain cavern, volcano, or system of either rises, sometimes slowly, sometimes drastically. When it's drastically…well, things can get a little ugly.

Ley tried to look down as Heral hoisted her up, but it took all her strength not to fall off, and the heat and ash and smoke stung her eyes. She'd have to keep her head angled up to breathe. She coughed a few times as she turned her head back up.

When Heral's tail was a foot or two from his head, Ley leapt for it. She grabbed the prehistoric ridge above his eye and Heral nodded his head slightly to help her up.

They didn't have time to fish for Pleecy, because just then a fountain of lava shot up _at least_ 30 feet if not _more_ and Heral had to swerve and ascend to avoid it.

After it died down, Heral moved to hover over the mouth. The roar of rising magma was gone, and the soup of molten rock still boiled in the volcano's guts, but now the peculiar stepping stones were covered over by the fresh flow of magma.

Ley moved her goggles back to their respective position; on the top of her head. She looked over the edge of Heral's head, wide-eyed and stunned. "..N-no…" she murmured, "Pleecy!" she called somewhat desperately into the volcano through cupped hands. Heral, too, seemed to have a sad expression, and let a low rumble escape his throat.

_iLiLiLiL_

"We_-he-_hell," Neeka heard a voice guffaw, "What's _this_? A _Static Tiger_, eh? Very nice, _very _nice…" the voice trailed off, and Neeka heard someone running their hand down the side of the ship like skin squeaking on a wet piece of glass. Neeka hunkered down farther under the bowl-shaped cockpit seat, ready to jump out and kill someone, but also shaking; something most S.I.R. Units were unable to do because of their programming.

"Is it…'usable', Sir?" another, more timid male voice piped up.

"Hmm…" hummed the other, gruffer, deeper, confident voice. It sounded a bit like Captain Ginyu from _Dragon Ball Z Kai's_ voice. Neeka figured he was a leader since his voice was similar to the voice of Irkens with high ranks; always demanding the upmost respect from their shorter counterparts, which they obviously get. The squeaking stopped abruptly. "Well, what do we have here_?_ A _mech tail_, now who would install _that_ on a ship like this?" the first voice queried to no one in particular.

"U-uhm…m-maybe a Pacifist, Sir?" Voice 2 supplied. It whimpered near inaudibly like it was being glowered at, then continued, "Or, uh –"

"Now, pray tell boy, what would give you _that_ idea?" Voice 1 cackled with a deep, guttural laugh. "S-since when would _those _fools have _mech tails_ on ships?" His guffaws faded away as his companion spoke up.

"W-well, Sir, there was a Pacifist insignia near the cockpit," Voice 2 said a bit more confidently from relaying information that may please its leader, Neeka supposed.

The chuckling Voice 1 had left over from his obviously sarcastic query abruptly stopped, Neeka assumed from astonishment. "Show me," it hissed angrily with a sound like through teeth.

_iLiLiLiL_

Heral had flown away from the mountain when he felt Ley begin to get upset. He circled around a few times before he found a clearing near the base of the volcano but where the volcano was out of sight, thanks to the horizon of trees. It was a bit similar to the clearing they'd spent the previous night in, too.

Ley was restless, so she starwatched and did some aeromancy* all night. Heral, _on the other hand_, kept looking through the trees to the cone, clearly disturbed. But it didn't seem to be a sorrowful disturbance: more like alert, ready…

* * *

><p>Somewhere around dawn, Ley spotted the second Venatian moon, Yeek. It was much larger in the sky then Ioux, and appeared to be at least three times the size the moon appears in the sky on Earth, even though it was just larger and closer. It was yellow-silver-lavender coloration, like the <em>Dracon's Root<em> flower Pleecy had almost grabbed before the mountain started to rumble from the movement of magma.

Ley pushed the thought from her head, still clinging to the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that her friend was still alive. As long as her PAK wasn't damaged, she kept telling herself, she'd be fine…

_*Right? Augh!* _she shook her head, _*Of course I'm right! It would take more than hot rocks to make Pleecy cross over, I know it! I _know her.* She scowled at the heavens.

"She'll get the job done," she said absentmindedly, not even _realizing_ that she had thought aloud again (even though she thought she had kicked that habit years ago!), causing Heral to look up from his sleeping coil at her. He had a wise glint in his amber-honey-bright-yellow eyes, like approval; like a monk's eyes, like the predatory eyes of his multiple space-species 'cousins'.

He turned his head rapidly to the mountain as a screech like a firework going off filled the air. Ley heard it too, and looked to the sky just above the cone as a purple-ish pink orb of light rapidly rose up to what looked like about (from the distance they were at) an inch above the mouth of the volcano. Soon, though, it stopped, faded away, and a barely visible figure started to fall. Heral shot off quick as thought, a green lightning bolt over Ley's dazed-with-disbelief vision.

Seconds later, Ley could see Heral coming back her way, a light blue luminosity sitting behind his head like a halo. Heral was keeping his head and neck somewhat straight so - …whatever it was - wouldn't fall off. Instead of landing as he normally would (a birdlike style), he lowered to about a foot off the ground and slid in next to Ley like a train coming into a train station. He lowered himself to the ground and raised his head and tail up as the light slipped down to his midsection. His head and neck were up, looking over his 'shoulder', and his dragon tail curled around to his front.

Ley stood over the blue-skinned Irken laying on Heral. Its eyes were half open – glowing slightly - and a mark on its head cast a tremendous amount of sky blue light. Pleecy looked up at Ley and smiled weakly. "Oh, hey-o," she said casually. Her voice was a bit strained, seeming to sound like she had a sore throat, almost. "Guess what I got?" she taunted in a sing-song voice.

Ley's eyes grew wide, "Your joking?" **(0.0)**

Pleecy chuckled and reached behind herself. She held up a lily that looked like stardust or moondust had been dripped into the paint used to color it, planted in a little clay pot like it was the most normal plant ever, and was ready to be placed on the porch railing.

Ley was speechless. "…You risked your life…to get a flower?" she said exasperatedly yet sarcastically, smiling a little.

"Of course: that's what I do," Pleecy said playfully.

"What you do. You mean scaring people half to death and _overexerting yourself_ is what you do?"

"Yee-up: been my job since my smeet days. _You_ know _that!" _Pleecy frowned momentarily, "and you should know not to worry 'bout me; haven't you learned _anything_, grasshopper?"

Ley just rolled her eyes at the smug look that regrew on Pleecy's face. "You're lucky I'm a Pacifist, or else I'd kill you for that little stunt," she said smiling.

"Why didn't you just come _find_ me to kill me yourself?" Pleecy said mockingly.

"_Gee_, I don't _know_. I'll keep that in mind next time you disappear _in a __volcano_."

"Good to see you too, Ley; and by the way, it's not the _first_ time! -" Pleecy grinned teasingly as Ley cut her off.

"- Oh, I _know_ it's not the first time!" Ley said as Pleecy's eyes rolled back and she fell back onto Heral. The light went completely out from her mark and eyes, and the world fell into near complete darkness once again, except for the meager glow from Ley and Heral's eyes.

**Author's Note - this was originally going to be a fight scene chapter, but I have to move it to next chapter so the next two chapters are going to be the same chapter just two different parts. This chapter would have been **_**HUGE**_** if I didn't split it. Btw the bumps on the tail were a snake thing: leftovers of the legs from evolution. They're very small and hidden by the scales…Yes I DO know what I'm talking about, I grew up with a frickin' boa constrictor. Did I mention I LOVE snakes too? XD Aeromancy is like cloud interpretation, I think.**


	23. Space Pirates of the Caribbean, Part 1

Pleecy swung a transparent energy sword in a continuous X motion as she merrily sang some random, jolly, pirate-y jig over the whistle of Venat's windy Jetstream. She was standing on Heral's head, on the flat-ish part between the eye ridges, batting and slashing at miscellaneous bugs and beasties that flew at them as an emerald ribbon flew over the forest.

The part that they were flying over looked like a swamp crossed with a jungle. They were heading for the enormous chain of cliffs that rose up a good 200-500+ feet above Venat's swamps like a huge grey scar. The swamps they were heading towards - for this is where the cliffs' base rested - were the farthest sections of jungle from the volcanoes of the planet, making up at least one-third of its surface. The duo had parked Ley's ship in a secluded place in the cliff chain with Neeka to guard it until they decided to leave.

They had left just before sunrise for the ridgeline, and it had taken a few good, solid hours of flying south before they could even _see_ it on the horizon: considering the cliffs' varying size, their flying speed, and Venat's size…well, you do the distance math and let me know.

_Preferably_, neither girl would mention it if it could be helped, but both girls felt something negative in the planet's energy. Something wrong. And didn't like it. But, of _course,_ this was something they should be used to by now. Especially Pleecy, but that's a _whole_ other story _entirely_.

Ley just sat on Heral's back near his 'shoulder blades' between his wings, cross-legged with head in one hand, wondering how her friend could near kill herself from - _extreme_ - overexertion one day, and then keep track of how many insectoid thingies she kills the next (which, by the way, she _was_ keeping track of. But really, what did you expect?).

Eventually Pleecy ended up switching from jumpy scalawag tunes to some song by an Earth band (really made up of a few double-breeds as well as humans)_ Creature Feature. _When Ley realized it, she looked up and sighed, rolling her eyes with a small smile, and plopped her head back in her hand.

Pleecy looked over her shoulder, "What?" She slashed down a giant mosquito-thing. "Music makes everything better," she laughed, "and what's an adventure without background music? **(^.^)**"

"_Normal?_" Ley suggested jokingly, if an adventure could _ever_ be normal, that is. _*Real enough to kill you,* _she added silently with a sarcastic, yet mourning tone.

"_Exactly!" _She swatted aside something without even looking. Ley didn't even have time enough to make out what it _was_. She sighed exasperatedly and laid back on Heral, arms folded behind her head. _*Oh Pleecy, what am I going to do with you...* _she thought, smiling slightly and contently.

_iLiLiLiL_

"What…the _Irking. H*ll!" _Pleecy bellowed, outraged, as they looked down on the ship.

It was in the middle of a circular, crater-like place: A huge bowl of rock with jagged, rough sides made of rock that jutted up like the sides of a crater **(Sarcastic A/N: _gee_, do ya think its a crater?)**, made of the same grey rock as the rest of the cliffs. Its base appeared to be smooth. Around it swarmed dozens of aliens that looked a bit like a Vortian crossed with the pirates from _Star Wars: The Clone Wars, _just more pirate-from-_Star-Wars_-y. They reminded Ley of the pirate stories from Earth, almost, except for the fact that Earth pirates didn't usually have weird, wrinkly grey skin. They pretty much had similar clothes, though: Ley assumed that was from the pirates' nomadic, thieving lifestyles. They also had a body shape similar to the adult humans.

Pleecy's fist clenched at her sides, and Ley noticed it: she noticed how her friend was absolutely stiff with rage, just like when she swore in front of the Tallests. Ley had a pretty good idea why Pleecy'd be as upset as she was at the sight of space pirates, as they were popularly called. But that, again, is another story for another day.

Thankfully, Heral had situated himself midair in the sunlight so that his feathers and scales reflected it in such a manner as to make him and his passengers near invisible. This was an adaptation of Venatian Quetz's; the reflected light could blind you like the sun if you look up at it. That is, if it's not making a Venatian Quetz invisible.

His body writhed restlessly, too. His 'miles' for being ridden without being tamed were almost up, and he could feel his instincts nudging at his brain; nudging to leave promptly, or desert these destructive creatures, or even eat them on the spot.

Ley stood up and moved over next to her friend, who was staring daggers down at the milling pirates contemptuously, brow furrowed. "Pleecy…" She put a hand on her friend's shoulder.

Pleecy _majorly_ started and looked to her left to see Ley's concern. "Oh, Eheheh, uh…" she mumbled, scratching the back of her head guiltily, "Sorry 'bout that." She cleared her throat and looked back down slowly. "…So what're we gonna do 'bout this?" Pleecy asked with a murderous tone and a fresh scowl.

Ley was nursing a diplomatic approach in her head, but she figured it'd be pointless if _someone in particular_ was still captain, so she put that idea down with sorrow and sighed. "You're not going to like this," she said sarcastically as they turned to each other. Pleecy had a smug look on her face. Ley continued, "but there's really only one option open for us."

Pleecy smiled at Ley with mouth slightly open, paused a second before turned forward sharply, then fist pumped while cheering "whhhoooo!" and front flipped off Heral's head. Ley laughed and followed her friend down to the ship's roof. Heral conveniently fled the scene, stage left. Thankfully, they had already patted Heral their goodbyes on the way over.

By the time Ley landed in the commonly-used catlike stance, Pleecy was already on her feet and swinging a translucent, pink-purple energy whip between the pirates in the crater and the ship in a semi-circle, since most of the pirates were in front of them. "Back, back ye scurvy dogs!" she called out.

"Uh, Pleecy, _little_ heavy on the pirate theme there," Ley joked from her right, standing while brushing herself off.

Pleecy cackled lightly with an insane grin as she raised her left hand to her right shoulder to throw the whip down again. But instead of slashing a new gouge in the smooth stone, Pleecy felt the energy whip hit and wrap around something in the crowd, and an alien in a red, torn-up captain's robe emerged from the parting crowd with the whip wrapped around his left forearm. He was a bit taller than the other pirates and also had the shriveled-looking grey skin and strange eyes. His head adorned brown Jack Sparrow styled hat that seemed to be pulled down lower over his eyes. His head was bowed slightly, giving him a spooky appearance. The 'robe' was actually similar to a trenchcoat except with a much longer, larger tail like a raggedy half-bell around his legs in a Japanese-girl's-dress fashion, reminding Pleecy of Earth-anime: it buttoned down from the base of his neck to just above his knees, then split into the tail. The sleeves had wide openings at his wrists too. Under his trenchcoat's tail, they could see knee-high black boots with spurs, but they could also tell they were advanced rocket boots; well, there goes Pleecy's assumption that they finally deteriorated to not-using-tech-y-ness. But just as they had tech last time she met them, they did this time, too. **(More A/Ns with sarcasim: I mean _really_, what life form would be caught _dead_ without new, deadly, stylish, Vortian-brand advanced weaponry? _Well,_ they _would_ be dead _without_ some, though so...0.0)**

The being looked up at them. Ley's expression hardened, but Pleecy's just took on an even more conniving glare and smirk. "Well, well, well, look who it is," Pleecy said, "A Jack Sparrow cossplayer."

The figure scowled under its hat. It had the same voice that Neeka had heard a few days ago, the one similar to Captian Ginyu's. "Good to see you too, space trash. I thought you got thrown out already."

"Well, polluting _does_ come back to bite you in the butt a lot, _now doesn't it_?" Pleecy scoffed smugly.

_*God, at this rate her mouth _alone_ will get us killed,* _thought Ley as she scowled, sizing up the man whom she assumed was the newest captain since he was different than the one she remembered.

"Oh really, now? If I remember correctly, it was your _own_ pollution that got you thrown here in the first place." The assumed captain grabbed onto the whip with his other shriveled-looking hand and pulled down on it hard. Pleecy went tumbling off the top of the ship diagonally and _luckily_ got her hands in front of herself before she faceplanted against smooth rock between Ley's ship and the captian.

Pleecy peeled herself off the stone ground, giving her head a shake or two while making a 'buuuurrrrrrgg!' kind of noise and standing confidently. "_Technically_, it was the _Tallests'_ trash, not mine," she said while grinning and making hand motions. She retracted the whip back to her hand, and it disappeared when the tip reached her clenched left hand at her side. "All sarcasm aside, I'm going to have to ask you to recall your crew, Davis."

The captain, whose name or _last_ name must have been Davis, chuckled with eyes closed and head bowed slightly. "Not likely, lassie."

"Then I'm gonna hav'ta rock you…" Pleecy said, eyes narrowing even more with the next phrase, "like a hurricane." **(Teamfourstar quote FTW! XD Don't know who they are, look 'em up on Youtube.)**

"You and what army?"

The next scene was quite a blur to Ley: quick as blinking, Capt. Davis, as Ley assumed his title was, had whipped out dual broadswords almost as long as Pleecy was tall and had brought them down on Pleecy, one sword in each hand. Pleecy, of course, had whipped out her_ own_ energy swords and threw them up in front of herself horizontally as the 2-1/2-times-taller-than-herself space scalawag slammed his swords down on hers. The contact made a few odd, deep purple sparks and a modest clanging sound, which gave Ley the impression that his own swords were specially treated and/or made or just enchanted like half of Pleecy's stuff is - again, long story for another day.

As she watched the bladed duo push against each other just mere feet away from herself, Ley felt what she knew all too well to be a laser bullet whiz past her head and saw a small tree on the edge of the smoothed crater explode. She whipped around to see that one of the pirates behind the ship had a laser pistol in his hand.

And a smug grin on his face.

Ley stared him down momentarily.


	24. Space Pirates of the Caribbean, Part 2

Ley arched her back slightly to the left and right as she dodged two more laser bullets from other pirates. Seeing as she would have to watch her friend's back _and_ the ship, she jumped off the ship to behind it, reached in to both her sleeves and whipped out more thorns in mid-flight, and landed catlike again with a bunch of pirates circled around her. About half of the pirates that were behind the ship now were staggering around behind the semicircle with sleep-inducing thorns jutting from their jugulars and grabbing at them. Unfortunate for them, the edges of the thorns were serrated like a shark tooth, so they'd be hard to rip out with_out_ a _lot_ of pain.

* * *

><p>Pleecy was faring just as well as her comrade was. She scooted back until she was in front of a boulder after having fought Davis for a few minutes and getting shoved back. A shadow stretched over her form, and two jolts of silver lightning clashed against storm-grey rock as Pleecy <em>very<em> swiftly evaded another strike.

She rolled to a crouched position like a spider and sprang up a nanosecond later. Two pinkish-purple comets shot up diagonally at the captain's face, but the streaks of silver lightning blocked them midair. Pleecy was suspended in midair momentarily, energy blades slammed down on Davis' blades.

She let herself be pulled down by gravity and landed in a cat-spider-like posture, seeing an opportunity. Pleecy speedily swept her feet under her adversary's, pulling off a successful low kick tripping maneuver. The captain fell back on the cold stone ground. Davis rubbed the back of his head, eyes squinted in momentary pain, and when he opened his eyes and looked back up there was a slightly short blue form standing on his chest with a pinkish-purple weapon at his throat.

"Check mate?" asked the sun-obscured female.

"Not even close, girlie." He reared his legs up and shot them forward and up.

* * *

><p>The pirate stumbled backward from Ley's kick – a roundhouse kick at that! She landed catlike and stood up, facing the pirate sideways as he stumbled backwards into a boulder. The pirate whipped out a laser handgun and aimed for between the human's eyes.<p>

Ley just smirked at him. In his scope, the female appeared to disappear, leaving behind only speed lines for a second. Next thing he knew, he felt the side of a hand tap a spot his neck.

* * *

><p>Ley was in a rush position with a hand up - having tapped the pirate's neck with the side of her left hand - with a cool, determined look on her face. He dropped to the ground, out cold, even though that move usually kills, and she returned to a normal standing position. Ley inclined her head over her shoulder to look at the few who were left. More pirates were coming around the back of the ship, to her left. Great.<p>

An idea struck her.

A way she could fight _without_ fighting, hee-hee!

Three pirates from her left, right, and front rushed at her with weapons similar to bayonets. She sprang into the air and landed on the front one's back, pulling out a cute bug just smaller than her hand. It looked like a cross between a Joltik and Spinarak (Pokémon) with big, cute _wittl' _eyes and Gir-nub segmented legs. The moment Ley sprang up again, the pirate started dancing around, reaching at his back, making weird 'who_oah_!' noises.

Ley'd put a wigglebug on him: a bug that tickles when it crawls on you! **(XD) **Oftentimes a favorite 'weapon' of Pacifists.

She did the same to the other two, and then sprang to the ship's roof as the trio started to dance the tickle-jig. Ley couldn't help but giggle a bit at the spectacle.

With everyone else except the dueling duo and Ley preoccupied with the wigglebugs, Ley was finally able to take a breather when she heard the earsplitting clang of metal against rock. She turned to see the duelers at the left edge of the crater. Apparently, Davis had gotten Pleecy up against the side and had swung his blades down when Pleecy jumped up above them, where she now was in-flight. Ley watched as Pleecy landed back down on the blades, ran up to the handles, and then leapt up with energy swords raised up over her head to strike. She slammed them down when she reached the air above his shoulders, but was blocked by flashes of silver lightning, and the dueling duo returned to pushing against each other's blades.

In the midst of watching the _Pirates of the Caribbean_-styled swordfight, Ley hadn't been paying attention to the pirates around the ship. But she was now, after having felt a searing hot pain on the back of her right calf. She winced and looked behind herself to assess the damage; that was a bit too close to the abdomen for comfort.

_*I really hope this doesn't come down t - * _ her thoughts were cuts off when she felt a grabbling claw of sorts grab her back and shoulders and jerk her towards the back right of the ship, "Whooaah!"

* * *

><p>Pleecy slashed from above after leaping, but this move also just got blocked. She braced her feet against his shoulders as they pushed at the other's blades. After about a minute of this, Pleecy saw it wasn't getting anywhere and pushed off him with her feet, sending him stumbling a bit and soaring into the air, landing in her usual catlike way quite nearby him, back-to-back, Pleecy still crouched.<p>

When she turned to rise, Capt. Davis whipped around. Pleecy's face met a laser pistol at point blank range. She had just enough time to back up a step and put her hands forward when a red beam of light energy nearly knocked the breath out of her. Luckily, being what she was, she was able to stop it with her hands, even though she went flying back a great distance with a crimson energy ball in hand at her ribcage.

Pleecy crashed into the crater wall again: not too phased, but dusty and sore. _*Note to self; no bullet stopping with bare hands until you train for it better,*_ she thought, picking her dusty, slightly aching body up. She shook the dust off like a wet dog as the dust cloud dissipated and heard a keyai near the ship. Pleecy looked over to see Ley roundhouse kick a pirate into the ship's hull, the two surrounded by others on stand-by at the ship's front. There was a flash of light like an explosion behind them as one of the wigglebugged pirates toppled over and a laser went flying into one of the pirates' ships. Pleecy could easily tell Ley was pretty much about to be overwhelmed if she wasn't _already_. Ley landed and hadukened a legion of thorns into the throats of countless bystanders skillfully. Pleecy smirked evilly at the sight as said hadukened pirates keeled over. Then a pirate came from behind Ley, and Pleecy's smirk changed to a wide-eyed look of horror.

* * *

><p>Ley felt someone grab her shoulder before she was spun around and lifted up by the throat. Ley was about to do something she knew <em>all too well<em> she'd regret when she heard the oddest thing cried out.

"_Ha di!" _

_iLiLiLiL_

**Author's Note – …I just love The Kane Chronicles, don't you? ^.^ **

**btw in the middle of adding the dividers, I found out how to get my MM-patented divders back on! Whoo!**


	25. Ship

If Ley was remembering correctly, that was something in _Egyptian_ that Pleecy had cried out.

She didn't have time to ponder it though, because the next thing she knew half the spectating pirates behind her were flung everywhere.

Like an explosion had gone off.

"_Ha di!"_

Ley's captor, _along with Ley,_ shot into the air. Ley felt herself be released seconds before she slammed cartoon-style into the top of the fin that the spike ball was attached to.

_iLiLiLiL_

'So, you've resorted to magick again, eh? _Pathetic,_" growled Davis, advancing on a pointing Pleecy.

"It's not pathetic if you know how to use it wisely," she said, then spat/added, "peasant," just to tick him off. She dropped her right hand from its point at the ship, standing slightly sideways, and her blades materialized in her hands again. The two rushed each other with surprising swiftness.

…There was a rush of colors and speed lines, a flash of purplish spark, more speed lines, and the dueling duo had switched sides. Davis' left arm sleeve had a dark red stain that was growing on its own. Pleecy smirked and saw another golden opportunity. She teleported away in a flash of purple-pink, only to appear behind the captain in another flash.

Clutching his forearm, Davis' pupils slid to his right with a quiet, annoyed growl as a glowing blade was slipped around his neck. "Check mate," he heard a female voice say with certainty, and scowled.

"Not quite, Irken," he spat. A bullet whizzed past Pleecy's head, and a whole crowd of pirates surrounded the pair speedily, guns trained inwards at the odd Blue Irken. The message was clear: _an eye for an eye_, so to speak.

…They all just stood there, waiting for the other's next move…

Pleecy's blood pounded in her hearing over the pulsing, though, she heard Ley break the silence. "Ship! _Code 7-2-8-5 double- 2 X! Password: Maroonias!"_

Pleecy heard an antenna-grating noise like metal grinding against itself and saw movement from the corner of her eye: the ship's front tilting up, the spider legs pushing the ship's body up, the metal rings separating, the spike ball elongating, the spike ball's laser grow, the cockpit window become obscure and the inside of the ship get filled with cords going every which way.

She couldn't believe her ocular implants! Ley's ship just went from ship to full-scale, full-fledged, animal android-thing!

Instead of being around ten feet tall, it had just risen itself up to around 30 feet. The tail had thickened to be at least as thick as Pleecy, and now the bean-shaped body has a neck like a snake that sits in such a way as to make the neck and head an S shape. The body sits at about a 45 degree angle from the horizontal way it had just been a few seconds ago. And now, in hindsight, those ginormous Irken-spider-legs make sense, since now the ship's front legs have unfolded themselves, raising up the ship's front, so now they were like oversized Tak's-ship-legs. The back legs had pushed themselves up too, and now sit in a Z shape. And to cap it all off, the now-frosted-glass windshield now had two red, narrowed eyes projected on it.

Ley ran towards Pleecy, who still had a glowing rapier at Capt. Davis' neck. As she came to her left side (left side if you'd be facing her), Pleecy dropped Davis and turned to the panting Ley. Ley doubled over, hands on her knees, "W…we may want to clear out now," she managed to huff out.

"What the _Irk_ did you _do!_?" Pleecy said, placing her hands on Ley's shoulders with a few minor shakes.

"Activated a defense system…?" Ley supplied jokingly, looking up and smiling meekly.

"_What? A defense system_! Since _when_ do you people put _transformation sequences_ in crap? What _is_ this, _Dragon Ball__?" _Pleecy said with a few more light shakes of Ley by the shoulders.

Ley straightened up and grabbed her – panicking – friend's wrists, pushing them away and taking a step back. "Scowl at me later, Pleecy; we should really get –" she was interrupted as a rumbling was heard. Everyone in the crater looked up as the ship…well; it seemed like a roar or something…

One of the forelegs crashed into the ground next to them, to Pleecy's right, and all hell broke loose as pirates scampered everywhere trying to avoid Ship's attacks. Ley led Pleecy by the wrist out of the scattering crowd to the crater's left edge.

"What_ now_, Ley! God Irkit, the ship –"

"Ship," Ley corrected.

"_Ship _is rampaging: how are we supposed to get the Frick out of here?"

They looked at each other a moment, contemplating, and that's when they heard the screech. Both looked up and saw a great green streamer barreling at them from the south (the part of the swamp to their right, opposite the direction they came from).

"My _God_, he's coming back – He's coming _back!_ I thought we used up our miles on him!" Pleecy said in astonishment, quickly turning her head back to an astonished, still-staring, slack-jawed Ley. Moments later and sure enough, Heral's hovering overhead, having conquered his instincts. He landed with them and started nuzzling Ley, his coils a tangled mass behind her.

"Heral, what the Irk are you _doing_ back here? Shoo, shoo! Go home! You're wild, _remember?"_ Pleecy said, making a few shooing motions at him.

Ley, petting Heral's snout from over her right shoulder, said calmly, "Pleecy, can't you tell? He wants to stay with us, it seems – ah! H-Heral! Ehaha! _Stop!_" Heral's nuzzling turned into nudging Ley playfully at her having figured it out his intentions.

Another explosion went off behind Pleecy in the center of the crater, making her wince. "Well, I'm not objecting – let's go!" she replied quite hastily. She quickly grabbed Ley, swung her on Heral, and leapt on herself.

For a while, they hovered over the crater, waiting the dust to clear. Ship's 'head' rose out of the huge dust clouds. Now his projected eyes were blue and oval shaped with an innocent look, like Gir's eyes, instead of a deadly red. Ley leaned over Heral's head and started petting Ship's head with a smile.

Pleecy's antenna twitched. "_Sooo_…you're….petting it?" she said with an exasperated look.

"Of course: he's harmless," Ley responded without looking back, as if it was perfectly normal for her to pet her own ship.

Pleecy sighed. "And you have a transformation sequence in your ship…_why_?" she asked, partially confused as to why her friend – who was a _Pacifist_– would have a transforming ship.

"Why else? Defense, mainly. But it _is_ nice to have a little companionship on occasion during travels."

"Ship just took out a whole crew of space pirates," she pointed out, deadpan. "How does something that can do _that_ on _autopilot_ provide company?"

"Well, I _did _add a few tweaks to the behavior section of his AI," Ley stated with practicality.

"Like…?"

"Canine similarities, SIR Unit similarities, different codes to activate different things…" Ley's listing trailed off.

"That explains a lot," Pleecy said wide-eyed. "Wait, _canine_ similarities?"

"Of course. As far as life goes, they're quite the loyal Genus," Ley said with admiration.

Ship's 'eyes' were shaped like upside down V's by now in pleasure. Pleecy laughed lightly, "Yea, yea, yea, I know. Now let's get going before I have to make him a dog treat, Ley."

Both girls felt relieved that they could _not only_ leave Venat, but also go home soon, but they both still felt that nagging, unmentionable feeling of something negative in the back of their heads; a nagging feeling, a feeling of forecasting, a feeling like the planet itself had a warning it couldn't express except through its energy, like impending doom before an Organic Sweep.

A feeling of future forlorn...

**Author's Note - …eh. Not too different than I originally planned. Hope the first big fight sequence wasn't too long/bad/boring/cliché–mary-sue-ish etc.**

***DOES NOT OWN THE PHRASE "HA DI"***


	26. Membrane's Watch

"No Pleecy, I told you already: I can't _go_ there!" Ley said firmly. She and Pleecy stood in the back of the ship, which was on autopilot flying over Venat to do the same maneuver they used to exit Earth's atmosphere. The seats were moved off to the walls again, and Neeka sat in the trunk with a crowbar trying to get a few dents out of herself until Pleecy could help her. Unfortunately, her master was busy trying to convince Ley into the last stop they'd have to make before returning to Earth. Pleecy had her back to the cockpit; Ley's back was to the trunk. The Mystic had teleported Heral to Ley's home after reaching an agreement that he would stay with Ley (since Pleecy didn't have an enclosure free at the moment and would have to design one when they return home). And just after _that_ discussion, Pleecy brought up the 'touchy' subject of retrieving the last ingredient Pleecy needed.

"Ah, come on Ley! It's for Dib's sake! It's not like we're going there to start a Frickin' revolution or anything! ," Pleecy said, hands held out to the sides in a sort of pleading posture, then mumbled, "They're doing that anyway." She added in a rather simple voice, "we're just going there…to pick something up…and not bother anyone…-"

"Yes, but I'm not _allowed, _Pleecy: we made a pact with them not to step foot on Sesmia until they've freed themselves, or at least gotten things under control," Ley replied back, arms crossed with a cliché 'annoyed female' posture, looking off to her left a tad so she didn't have to look at her current adversary. She muttered the last part.

"Oy _vae_, Ley! _Okay_, then where _else _can we get _Griffifh Claw Diamonds,_ Ley? I don't suppose you'd like to ask someone for them, hmm? Dimidium doesn't have any; the Tallests' don't have any. That's that. There's no one else we could ask without getting killed or sucked into something that could make us late. We're already late. So if we don't go to Sesmia, then how else are we gonna get the diamonds?" Pleecy demanded, putting her hands on her hips with her pelvis tiled, a knee bent.

Ley thought a moment before her head turned to Pleecy, "We _could_ ask the Emperor –"

"If a Pacifist and an Invader could go into one of their sacred forests and take a buncha rocks?" Pleecy snapped, irritated.

"_Precisely."_

Neither spoke for a few seconds, the only sound being Neeka's grunts of effort. A metallic sound was heard, like something crashing into the wall, and Neeka called "I'm okay" from behind the seat situated in front of the trunk.

Eventually Pleecy said with absolute casualness and a bored look, "Okay," shrugging. "What if he says no?"

Ley got a considerate look, a finger floating from her crossed arms to rest on her chin. "Then…we're screwed?" she offered, eyebrows raising, head slightly tilted, her hand moving from her chin to midair in front of it.

iLiLiLiL

It was just over a week after the girls had left when Gaz's watch started beeping in class. The face went black and started blinking 'NOW' in red letters with tiny beeps. She pushed up her right sleeve to see why it was beeping and saw the letters, knowing this was Neeka's signal Pleecy said would be sent. Since she was in Skool, though, the metaphorical package would have to wait to be delivered.

iLiLiLiL

A dark, purple-hued forest with faintly glowing, huge quartz-like crystals all through it. The stars above. The rustle of leaf litter as two 'aliens' to the planet ran for their lives after taking a few of said rocks.

"W-was this really a good idea Pleecy?" Ley said to her companion jumping from branch to branch next to her as the canopy whizzed by. Pleecy and Ley were moving through the canopy of a Sesmian forest in a similar manner to the way they had run at the bazaar, like Naruto ninjas, but faster.

"Well, he said he was fine with it, but for us to expect getting attacked. I figured he meant the wildlife!" Pleecy said over the sounds of hissing and rustling.

"Apparently not. I_ told_ you the Guard would attack us anyway."

"Oh well," – a bladelike fan like a geisha's fan zoomed past Pleecy's head and stuck into the tree ahead of her. She glanced at it as she past the tree swiftly. "_Dang,_ they have great accuracy," she panted to Ley. "What was I saying? Oh yeah. It's not like they'll follow us off the planet or out the forest."

"No, but it'd be very easy for them to catch us," Ley said as another hiss ripped through the twilight from behind them.

"I know," Pleecy said in a smart-alec tone with a smirk.

iLiLiLiL

Gaz had seen her dad's usual limmo in front of the house, so she knew he had to be home for once. Perfect timing, the ignorant male…

"Dad," she called when she stepped in the door.

"Not now Honey! I'm on a toast _breakthrough_!" Gaz heard her father's voice call from the kitchen.

She sighed. "Oh _I'll_ give you a breakthrough," she mumbled. "Well, I've got a _genetics_ breakthrough for you," she called back, figuring this would catch his attention.

Professor Membrane leaned out the kitchen doorway, "Really? Have _you_, at least, taken a liking to science, Gaz?" Membrane asked in amazement.

"No, not yet, but I have something Pleecy needs you to see." She walked up to him with the watch in hand.

Membrane stepped away from the doorway and bent down to his scary daughter. "A watch? Why would your little friend need me to see this?" he questioned, taking the watch and standing up. "I don't think I'll have time to –"

"Well _too bad_, Dad: it has to do with Dib."

That shut him up, finally. He sighed and slouched a bit. "How do you work it?" he asked exasperatedly.

"First, she wanted you to be in a soundproof, private room. Then press this thing here," Gaz stretched up on her toes and pointed to a button that looked like the thing you turn to change the time on a normal watch.

"_Fine;_ I'll be in the lab closet."

Gaz smirked…or was it a smile?

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><p>Membrane locked the door to his lab's medium-sized walk in closet, turned his back to it, and looked at the watch. "What in the world powered by me is <em>this <em>supposed to do? It's only a _watch,_" he mumbled, looking down at the piece of metal in his left palm.

He pressed the button in wearily. The professor jumped when the watch's face popped up and a metallic stem shaped like a 7 popped up pointed at him.

"_Retinal scan," _a computerized, slightly annoying voice said, "_Retinal scan approved: Professor Membrane," _the voice started as the stem went back into the watch and the face flipped back up. A holograph projector from inside the watch showed a red image of the Irken Invader insignia as the voice went on, _"the following recording is for your viewing only. Please verify that you are able to observe in absolute privacy and then touch the holographic image to begin viewing."_ He touched the holograph.

The red holograph flickered away before being replaced by a blue-hued holographic image of Pleecy, disguised, standing to the right of a projection screen. _"Greetings, professor. I'm sure you know me already, but my name is Pleecy" - she_ did finger quotes around the next word- "_'Nekri.' _

"_Actually, Nekri isn't even _part_ of my name, but's that's how you most likely know me by now. In fact, to understand what you are about to hear and see, you need to know one thing," _she deactivated her disguise, and Membrane went wide-eyed… er, wide-goggled. _'Yes, Dib is right when he talks about aliens called Irkens, and as you can see, I _am _one, but I'm not really here to do anything bad to your planet, so don't worry." _ She evilly grinned briefly before scowling sadly. _"If you are watching this, then your son's life is in danger. You see, just about a week ago, an accident occurred in my labs: Dib knocked over a few, ah, _choice_ chemicals, and these chemicals entered his body through a cut on his finger. _

"_These chemicals inverted his DNA. In other words, he's now transmuting into an Irken as we speak. _

_If you're watching this _now_, just about a week after I've left to gather ingredients for an antidote, then it seems I'll be needing –no, Dib will be needing – your scientific help. If I haven't started home yet, then I may be a bit late to help Dib; unfortunately, we're on a bit of a time limit here. My labs can explain that for you, as I don't have time. Anyway, in case I can't make it, I've devised a backup plan. I'm sure that, you being your planet's best scientist, and my having the more advanced technology, you could find an antidote using my labs. This watch will be your literal key to my labs. I'm giving you full access to them, so you'll have all kinds of things at your disposal. _

_If even you can't find the antidote, then we planned to install a PAK in Dib," _Pleecy turned around and pointed at her PAK while looking over her shoulder. _"A PAK is an Irken device that is almost like a second brain, since we're bred in such a way as to need them. If they're removed, we have ten minutes to live unless it's returned. If Dib changes completely, we'll have to give him one of these." _She turned back around. _"He'd be perfectly fine with one, and I would give him a holo-disguise like the one I'm wearing, but I don't know how well _you_ would handle having a non-human son, Ehehe…_

She cleared her throat. _ "And with that, I have to leave now if I want to be on time. I hope that you don't have to watch this, but if so, my best wishes to you – _

"_Knowing you, Pleecy, he'll have something started and we'll get back at the last minute," _said another female voice off-screen, which Pleecy turned to.

"_Ley, I'm recording!" _Pleecy yelled to her right.

"_Well, wrap it up, because we're ready to leave."_

"_Okay, geez," _she turned back to the camera. _"Good luck, Professor. I hope to meet you personally one day." _Then the alien added heartily_, "And you better be grateful _and _careful because trusting another with labs like mine is a very precarious thing to do!" _The odd being reached forward and turned off the recording, blanketing the closet in shadows again.


	27. The Note

Ley landed in the clearing, looked back, and sighed at the sight of her friend up a purple-blue-and-green-hued tree dodging what appeared to be flying icicles. She rolled her eyes, "Pleecy, quit fooling around! Let's go!"

"Neeka -gyah!" Pleecy called as she dodged something and landed on a branch in a one handed handstand like a monkey. "Start the Frickin' engine! Nyah!" Pleecy's eyes widened as she looked back towards the forest and saw a fireball feet from her face. She dived sideways off the branch and caught onto another with a spider leg from her PAK. Her other spider legs dangled in the air, the ground at least 30 feet below. Pleecy's tongue stuck out in effort as she fully extended a spider leg and from there tried to make it even_ longer -_ if that was even at all _possible_.

The spider leg dangled about five feet off the ground when another geisha fan boomeranged around a tree to the Irken's right and sliced the spider clinging to the branch clean off at a joint. Pleecy winced as she began to fall. The tip of one spider leg touched the ground, another stabbed into another branch higher up, and Pleecy seemed to twirl like a music box ballerina for a second. She looked up, scowling, and retracted the legs with a jerk. Ley ran up to her as she landed in her usual fashion and helped her up.

"We should _really _get outta here," Pleecy chuckled with a small smile and she stood up.

iLiLiLiL

"Okay, where did I put that waterbottle…?" Diz mumbled to herself as she ambled into Pleecy's Chemical Lab, looking for a bottled concoction she experimented around with made for Dib, if he could drink it.

She surveyed the room's counters and spotted a red Earth waterbottle on the right wall's counters a few feet away from her. "Ah, there you are!" she said with a grin, and jogged up to it. **(:D)**

Her brow furrowed and a small scowl grew as she came up in front of the counter.

Yes, the bottle was there, but to its immediate right sat a small white sticky note with sloppily written Irken writing on it. The writing looked hastily written by something other than an Irken, since it was a tad scribbly looking and had a few spirals in places - but Irken writing doesn't _have_ any spirals. Diz could tell (thanks to her 'officials training') that it was some species of energy being who had written it, most likely. A small brown bag humans commonly use to carry smooth stones in sat on the corner of the note:

* * *

><p>You're not going to be able to get any diamonds like that. Far too risky. You'd be better off trying the bazaar again. Or you could just <span>ask,<span> you know. We get them often and quite easily. **It doesn't take much to have a little manners and a little faith.**

~Purpline Twilight

* * *

><p>iLiLiLiL<p>

"Neeka! Hurry up with that engine!" Pleecy called over her shoulder. She knelt at Ley's right, trying to get an icicle out of her trench coat that had it pinned to the ground. Neeka herself had an arm pinned to the ship's interior by another icicle.

As Pleecy pulled on the icicle, she felt a spot in her PAK vibrate. Her communicator extended from her PAK, like Zim's did when Dib pursued him the first time. She grabbed ahold of it. Ley, still on her feet, gave a gentle tug on her vest, tearing a big hole in the end of the right side of it but freeing it, at least. She walked away to help Neeka as Pleecy said – or rather, _complained_ - into her communicator, "_Whaaat?"_

"Pleecy, we've got a…well, I don't _think_ it's a problem –_"_

"_**WHHAAAT!"**_ Pleecy bellowed, apparently annoyed.

"Note. Bag. Waterbottle. Diamonds! You guys can come home! We have just enough diamonds! I don't know how but we do! They just appeare - _"_

"_**What! **_– Gyah!" Pleecy fell back when she tried to dodge an icicle by leaning backwards, the communicator resting beside her head on the ground.

"Oh for Irk's sake _STOP __INTERRUPTING__ME!" _ Diz bawled in her antenna.

Pleecy, sitting up while rubbing the back of her head, replied, "Ok, ok, God, I'm sorry. It's just…well, this isn't the best time."

"Why?"

Pleecy was silent.

"You didn't…" Pleecy heard a rumbling sound ignite the air: the ship's engine's starting up.

She fished in her PAK, brought out a few shards of something that looked similar to Quartz, and pitched them at the forest calling, "Here ya go k thanks bye gotta go!" while scrambling towards the ship all in a matter of seconds.

Diz, on the other side of the phone line, facepalmed.

iLiLiLiL

Pleecy scrambled quadruped-ly through the ship's opened side window. Ley stood in front of her, a little looming, with fists on her hips.

Pleecy looked up, still panting as the ship took off and a final icicle shattered against the closing window. "See…wa-wasn't so bad."

Ley facepalmed as Pleecy hung up on Diz and retracted her communicator.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note – Alrighty people, just a few more chapters to go! 8D But be warned: they shall be vague. VERY vague. Prolly. XD <strong>


	28. Homecoming with a Dash of Mystery

Dib writhed in pain on the hospital stretcher, vision blurring to the point of seeing merely fuzzy blotches instead of outlines. Thankfully, his antennae could do all the 'seeing' for him. He knew that his family, Diz, and the S.I.R. Units were around the bed trying to keep him under control and consoled, but he wasn't sure if _Zim _was there or not: he kept popping in and out of Dib's antennae/mental radar, along with the scent of flowers playing on his antennae.

He heard the door slide open and a few more fuzz balls hustled in: a sky blue blur, a small silver blur, and a green-black-and-blue blur. The trio moved to the end of the bed, next to a purple-and-green blur he knew for certain to be Diz.

"About _time_ you guys got here!" exclaimed the Diz-blotch.

"Sorry," said Ley's voice, "We had to wait for Pleecy to finish the serum."

"Well it shouldn't have taken _that_ long! The house detected the ship dropping Pleecy and Neeka off almost an _hour_ ago!"

"Hey, if it's in my Special Labs, expect it to take some time, okay! – " growled the Pleecy-lint.

The green-blue-black blur moved closer to Pleecy and appeared to put hands on her shoulders and a female voice said, "Calm down Pleecy, we're all just stressed now, ok? We have a job to do, anyway. Professor, if you and your daughter could leave the room…"

"Of course," said his father's voice as a white blur moved toward the door.

Gaz's purple blur moved to the foot of the bed and lingered. "…Good luck brother." She quickly left the room.

Pleecy moved to the left side of the bed. "Ready Ley?"

"Let's get to it," her voice replied. "While we have the time."

Pleecy leaned down somewhat towards Dib's face: the closer she came, the clearer her form became until it was near completely clear at just a few feet above his face. "Dib? Dib, can you look at me, bud?"

Dib blinked a few times. "P-Pleecy? You're back," he murmured with a voice that sounded breathless, a feeble smile spreading on his lips.

"Yes: Just in time. Now look at me, Dib. Look me right in the eyes." With a serious look, Pleecy pointed two fingers at her eyes.

A neon blue flash enveloped Dib's vision before he lost consciousness.

iLiLiLiL

A smiling Pleecy waved after the Membrane Family from her door's window as they walked down her sidewalk and rounded the electric fence's corner to the left. Diz came up behind her.

"Well then, now that _that _crisis is over, how's about we get started on the Checkpoint preparations, Pleecy?"

Pleecy turned around, smiled wider and laughed lightly through her nose; an exhale of air. "Sounds good to me. I'll meet ya down in the Blueprint Room."

"Okay, don't take too long," Diz said, turning around and heading for the kitchen, her elbow bending with left hand floating up to an equal height as her shoulders in a girly fashion. "The first Scouts will start out for Earth as soon as I give the Tallests' the OK."

"A'ight. Be right there."

As Diz walked on air into the kitchen, door swinging shut behind her, Pleecy turned around and placed what looked like a moon-colored Lily on the window sill with an emerald stalk and leaves, so healthy-looking it seemed to have _just_ been dug up and placed in its sparkly, midnight-black stone pot. "Now, about those plans…" she purred to herself with a chesire cat grin and chuckled evilly, drumming her finger tips together as she turned and headed for the kitchen's elevator.

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><p><strong>Author's Note: Well, there you have it, folks! Book 1 of Mystic Mindset, finished! I hope you liked it, and I should be finishing TSG soon as well before heading on to Book 2 :) <strong>

**Thanks for Reading Everybody! 3333 I had tons of awesome reviews, even though they were from the same people XD, tons of views, and tons of fun writing Book 1! ~ 333333**


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